


Same Time Tomorrow

by cloudstroke (aQuired)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Bodyguard AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:50:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2560322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aQuired/pseuds/cloudstroke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being bailed out of prison, the first thing Erik's told is that he must commit another murder. </p><p>Which, under the ruse of a noble bodyguard, should've been simple. </p><p>But then he learns just how much the sweater-vest wearing teenager means to him, and it's a damning pity, that some things are just easier said than done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is **near-finished** so you do not need to worry about it being a WIP or abandoned. Hooray!

Erik didn’t count his days. He wasn’t the kind to scrawl on walls or forge escape plans or even give a shit about when he’d be released.

When he emptied his magazine into Sebastian’s Shaw’s forehead—that was when he had broken free, revenge releasing him from the cage that was his intolerance of Shaw’s living, breathing, polluting existence.

He hadn’t put up a fight against handcuffs, jail bars, or beatings. He had resigned to being content with the justice he had brought to his parents, even if that meant rotting in confinement as a result.

He didn’t count the days.

So he was profoundly surprised when he was led out of the pen and taken to an office, where his prison overalls were traded for casual clothes and the few belongings he came in with were returned to him: a tattered wallet and a watch that no longer worked.

Could his sentence have been reduced? Was being silent and compliant in his cell counting as good behaviour that would merit an early release? Barely a decade had passed, he was sure of it. Unless time seemed to have fleeted away from him altogether…

Perhaps he should’ve counted his days.

Then the officer announced his bail, and things started to make even less sense.

The woman in the pearl-white Porsche allegedly responsible for Erik’s release wore a face he could not remember. He didn’t know this woman, and he wasn’t sure if it was in his best interest to. She owed him an explanation, though, and her smug glance suggested she wanted to do exactly that. Her arm stretched out to the side and opened the passenger door in invitation.

Erik stepped in warily, shut the door, and placed his hands on his knees.

“First of all: you’re welcome.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t say thank you.”

The woman’s laughter was a light, confident sound. “Oh, you will be, Mr Lehnsherr. You will be.”

She seemed to be fanning herself with a sheaf of photographs, and Erik’s eyes scanned the unfamiliar faces.

“I suppose you’re wondering how we know each other,” she began, fixing her hair in the rear-view mirror—no, she eyed the street while pretending to fix her hair. “And as you suspect, we don’t. You don’t know me, but I know almost everything about _you_ , Mr Lehnsherr.”

Erik’s hackles rose. “You knew Shaw,” he surmised, suddenly alert to the locked car door, the tinted windows.

“You’d been imprisoned for six years, sweetie,” she smiled, folding her arms. “All that time to think. Surely you must’ve wondered how simple it was that day, how everything managed to fall into place, and the man just happened to be at the right place at the right time?”

He’d meant to snap and say it took the effort of over ten years to hunt Shaw down, track him from place to place, string together fragments of information from every associate in league with him and build himself into a stronger, more powerful version of himself who lived only for one motive—

But it ran short. The implication was heavy in the woman’s voice. He’d contemplated every moment leading up to Shaw’s death, and there was no ease in locating his Miami villa and hiding inside it, famished and restless, waiting for Shaw to return, but…

“I was aware of you lurking in the garage for twelve days, and I was the one who asked him to make the trip down to see me. It wasn’t all _luck of the draw_ , sugar. I needed him dead just as badly as you did.”

Erik turned his face to the side, returning the woman’s fierce glare. How the woman knew Shaw well enough to be residing in one of his many properties wasn’t his concern—Shaw didn’t just ruin lives, he had ownership of some, but that had ended when Shaw’s life did. Ge looked at the woman—she was still unfamiliar—and tried to determine what she believed she had over him, now.

“You’re right,” he said calmly. “I am thankful. Now I’m guessing there’s something you want from me in return, so if you’d like to begin, please do.”

The woman beamed, dropping her sunglasses on her nose and starting the engine of the car. The photographs in her hand had now landed in Erik’s lap, a name printed behind each.

“I knew you’d be perfect for this.”

They drove out towards the city, and Erik’s eyes drank in the sight of civilisation. People, roads, houses. There was an odd sense of numbness returning to him, though—like he knew that he still didn’t belong.

The three images in his lap were of a man, a woman, and a boy. According to their names, they shared the family name Xavier. Father, mother, and son, then.

“Quite right,” the woman replied to what he had in fact said aloud. “The man - Brian Xavier - died recently. He was murdered. His widow, Sharon,” the woman paused to sigh, “she’s in Rehab. Half a bottle away from joining him. And their son.”

Their son. Erik held his photograph between thumb and forefinger, studying his young features.

“You have two months to kill him.”

\---

Erik was stood outside an offendingly enormous mansion with a knife wedged in his left sock and a gun visibly hanging from its holster and he didn’t want to kill a teenaged boy, he really didn’t, not even for the woman he was indebted to.

But Emma Frost was a woman he couldn’t defy. He’d gathered that much about her. And they were allies now, she claimed. His bail hadn’t been cheap, even if he didn’t ask for it, but the sacrifice she made to help Erik kill Shaw—that was worth everything he could bestow.

Worth the life of a seemingly innocent teenager?

He couldn’t be the kind of man who did that. Surely, he couldn’t.

And yet, there he stood.

\---

“Why do you want him dead?”

She drew a sigh, clenching the steering wheel.

“It’s a long story.”

“You won’t believe how much time I have.”

“Well, the more you know about it, the harder this will be.” Her lip curled with displeasure. She gave him a once-over, as though assessing if he was ready for what she was about to tell him. Then she said, “Brian Xavier and I were good friends. He even made me the Godmother of his only son.” She inclined her head towards the photograph. “We—”

“If you were friends, why didn’t he help you when you were… captured by Shaw?”

There was no reply.

“Was it you who murdered him?” he asked cautiously.

“ _No_ ,” she boomed, shaking her head from side to side. “The last thing I wanted was for him to die. What good would that have done?”

“But now you want to kill his son.”

“I don’t—it’s not that simple. Brian was… his net worth was fifty fucking million. He was born disgustingly rich, lived disgustingly rich, and died disgustingly rich. In his will, he gave most of his wealth to his son, the rest to his foundation. On his death bed he was aware of how many debts I had to pay off, how much money I needed—money that was _expendable_ to him—but he only made one change to his will.”

Erik waited as she heaved in a long, bracing breath.

“His son Charles inherits all of the Xavier family riches on his eighteenth birthday, and until then, he is to be kept under the protection of a bodyguard at all times.”

Her disapproval went unsaid.

“That’s a lot of love for a son he barely even looked at, but there you have it,” she muttered.

Erik didn’t understand how that was _love_ , exactly. He ignored the thought. “How will his death benefit you, then?”

“I’m his next of kin. As the Godmother. He has no other… relative. And the mother is, of course, unstable.”

“So that only leaves the bodyguard issue, I presume.”

Perhaps not. The woman smirked, lifting her glasses off to show the delight in her eyes.

“I wouldn’t call that the issue. _That_ would be the solution.”

\---

Erik bounded up the steps that led to the door and gave it a solid knock. He was dressed in black slacks, a black dress shirt, and a warm leather jacket. The clothes, some weapons, fake identification, and a kill order was all Frost had given him. He had no money, no home, and no friends.

Still. He could run away from all of this.

He didn’t want to kill a teenaged boy.

The door opened to reveal a tall, stern man decked in uniform and an apron, inquisition in his beady eyes.

“How may I help you, sir?”

Erik cleared his throat.

“My name is Erik Lehnsherr. I’ve been sent here by Emma Frost. I… believe my services have been required to safeguard a Charles Xavier, as of recent, unfortunate circumstances.”

“Yes, of course, please do come in,” said the man soberly, stepping aside. “Ms Frost told me to expect you. Come in.”

Frost had informed him about the house staff: a butler, three maids, two chefs, and one gardener-cum-driver. What time they came, what time they left. Which ones to evade and which ones to gain the trust of.

“Master Xavier is—Oh, bugger it, he’ll have my head if he hears me call him that. _Charles_ is having his breakfast right now, so if you’d like to follow me, I’ll give you a tour of the house.”

Erik nodded, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He tailed the butler around each corner of the mansion - fifteen rooms, three floors, and—

He was led to his own personal quarters. He had a place to stay. A bed, he observed, large and four-postered, something out of dreams. A dresser, a walk-in closet, and an en suite bathroom.

He poured all of his concentration into looking mildly impressed.

The kitchen was their last destination, and it was empty by the time they reached it, so he was led to the foyer where a young boy stood wrestling with the sleeve-hole of a blue cardigan, fixing it so his head emerged from the right place. He pulled it down his torso, his hair bouncing back up in complete disarray.

Erik couldn’t determine if he was captivated by the boy because this was the person whose life he was supposed to take, or because his sweet, innocent face demanded that much attention.

He cursed Frost. He cursed her for saying this would be easy. That nobody would care if Charles Xavier died, few people would attend his funeral, even fewer would cry.

“Charles, this is Mister Erik Lehnsherr. He will be offering you his protection for the next few months—”

The boy’s eyes widened, flitting between the two men. “But—I thought I’d made it quite clear that this would be completely unnecessary.”

The butler placed his hands on his hips, then moved to untie his apron. “Charles, your Aunt Emma and I are going to ensure that we have done everything to keep you safe. It was your father’s dying wish, my dear.”

Xavier looked down at his feet with a closed expression.

“The person responsible for killing him could’ve been stopped, Charles. We simply cannot take that risk with you. Mr Lehnsherr here is Ms Frost’s highest recommendation, and he will be devoted to keeping you out of harm’s way. Isn’t that right, Mr Lehnsherr?”

Erik nodded, hoping his demeanour didn’t betray his disloyal intentions.

“I—yes of course I will,” he said, cursing Frost in his head.

The boy eyed him with faint curiosity, then flashed a small, half-smile as he hoisted his bag onto his shoulder. He raised his brows at Erik. “Prepare to be extremely bored.”

Then he swayed out of the front door, shouting a quick farewell, and forcing Erik to jog in order to catch up with him.

Xavier was in his second year of college, he remembered. He didn’t live onsite, and preferred to trek his way to classes instead of having the staff drive him. If Erik’s memory served him right, Frost had mentioned something about Charles wanting to reduce his carbon footprint—whatever that meant. Erik had been in prison for too long to make sense of whatever that was.

So, no. Xavier couldn’t be persuaded to get a lift. They walked through the November breeze, the boy leading the way as Erik followed. He studied their route, watched as Xavier stepped over crispy, deciduous leaves, consumed an apple, and occasionally turned around to glance at him.

Erik preferred the chill of New York to the prickly heat in Florida, and even after serving a sentence, he found he still enjoyed the isolation the Xavier estate offered. The journey to Xavier’s school was entirely peaceful, not a soul of interaction, and the way it cleansed Erik’s mind had him suddenly certain why Xavier was insistent on travelling by foot.

He had to remind himself of why he was here, and how this could come to his advantage. Having been surrounded by criminals for years, he tried to think like one - would these acres of wide, endless greenery help him throw off the police for a while, as they searched for Xavier’s discarded body?

Erik felt sick.

This was supposed to be _easy_.

They arrived at a series of buildings, and Erik had almost lost the boy in the throngs of students skittering between them, until Xavier had mounted a staircase that elevated his height and brought him back into view. Erik ran to catch up with him just before the boy was about to disappear behind the door.

Xavier turned around, fingers clutching the door handle. He opened and closed his mouth for a while, then pointed his thumb towards the lecture hall.

“So I guess I’ll… see you at the end of the day?”

“No, I’ll be waiting out here for you,” Erik said, leaning against a pillar. The boy frowned.

“I have a two hour period. Then an hour long workshop. And a three hour exam. You’re seriously not going to…”

Erik crossed his legs at the ankles, shrugging.

“Oh. You are.” The boy bit his lip in thought, then shrugged his backpack off and dropped it next to his legs. He unveiled a thick textbook and handed it to Erik. “Here’s something to read.”

Blinking, Erik took it. “What’s this for?”

“So you don’t get bored,” Xavier said it as though it was a ridiculous thing to ask. “Besides, a grown man loitering around the corridors looking like he’s about to murder someone isn’t exactly the kind of scene you’d like to see in an academic institute.”

Fair point. Erik held the book between both hands and lifted it in an awkward gesture of gratitude. Xavier nodded once before leaving for class, and for the next two hours Erik flicked through a Psychology textbook and learned about the wonders of association learning in hungry dogs.

Those two hours passed quickly, as did the next one—Erik followed him as he went from one building to the next, and immediately settled down in the nearest bench to get stuck into the book again. He hadn’t noticed Xavier watching him until he heard him shout, “I’ll quiz you later!” before leaving for his next lesson.

The boy met up with a tall, dark-haired youngster for lunch, and together they sat on the grassy field with stacks of sheets and books scattered between them. Xavier introduced Erik to Hank before they both erupted into sudden conversation, bent over their notes.

Erik sat a small distance away from them, wondering how this had become his life, when Xavier summoned him over. This time he offered Erik one of his sandwiches.

“You must be starving,” he said, concerned, and shook the bag in front of Erik until he took it.

Erik had a gun on him that was meant to kill this boy within the next two months.

He was surprised the sandwich stayed down.

Xavier came out of his exam looking pleased, and after parting ways with Hank, he rejoined Erik as they walked home. As promised, he shot quick questions at Erik, who half-heartedly answered back, even though he was inwardly desperate to get each correct.

Before he knew it, they were back at the mansion.

Upon entering they were told that dinner would be ready in an hour, and Erik briefly wondered if he was also expected to join them—he was just the bodyguard, after all. But then Xavier’s voice was in his ears, “remember dinner’s in an hour,” before he’d headed into his bedroom, and Erik had slowly walked away into his own.

He found sweatpants in his closet and changed into them, happy to be ridded of any weapons. He rediscovered the gym down in the basement and proceeded to work himself to fatigue, draining his energy under weights and on machines. He headed back up into his room for a quick shower before making his way into the kitchen, pleasantly exhausted.

Even if they’d thrown him last week’s leftovers, he’d have been sufficiently satisfied. Instead, he was presented with a three-course meal: a bowl of soup with bread to start, followed by a portion of vegetables and smoked salmon, all leading up to a generously layered trifle for dessert.

He was embarrassingly full as he polished his plate with his fingers, but when he glanced around him, all eyes were trained on the young master of the house.

Xavier was eating slowly, contemplatively; the entire kitchen staff were looking on like they were awaiting a verdict. Brian Xavier’s death was still a fresh impact on their lives, and the eagerness to please his only son was apparent in them all.

Erik tried to imagine Frost sitting there, the same kitchen staff hovering around her as they waited for approval or dismissal.

“Thank you for that, it was splendid,” Xavier announced, pushing his empty bowl away from his reach. “But you didn’t have to go through all of that trouble for me. You know I would’ve been equally pleased with beans on toast.”

The butler grinned, ruffling Xavier’s hair.

“Charles, it’s no trouble whatsoever. We all enjoy giving you the finest treatment, and you deserve it.”

The boy sealed his lips into a smile instead of protesting and lifted his head to meet the eyes of everyone standing around him. He pushed his chair back and stood, placing his crumpled napkin in his bowl. “I know it’s… strange, with him permanently gone, but… the fact is, he’s never coming back. I’m extremely aware of that, and though I appreciate what you’re all trying to do, I urge you all to stop pretending for me like he’s still here.” Xavier wrapped his arms around himself. “Because let’s face it. How often was he?”

Then he excused himself and left, everyone still and listening as the sound of his feet against the floorboards faded.

Erik swore to himself that he would do his best to avoid getting earfuls of anymore conversations, lest he also wanted to stew in the tense silence that pervaded the Xavier estate that evening.

\---

The next morning, Erik was sleeping in.

A bed that comfortable should be nowhere near him, he thought, wrenching himself out from under the warm sheets to get washed and ready.

Xavier was significantly quieter throughout the day. He didn’t even meet up with his tall friend Hank, nor would he talk to Erik, and it should’ve been a relief that his day turned out to be short and silent—they were walking home before he knew it—but it was peculiar all the same.

Frost would be calling him tonight, so he decided to settle in the lounge for that evening. Xavier, he’d checked, was working in his study, but only an hour after Erik had sat down with a book from the library to read, the boy was ambling in.

Erik looked up and shut the book he was reading, focusing instead on Xavier as he crossed his legs and tucked into the rocking chair opposite him.

“Hi,” the boy said, hands in his lap.

“Hello,” he replied, sitting up.

“Are you not completely bored out of your mind yet?” Xavier asked, inclining his head to the side.

Erik gave the question some thought. How would a dutiful bodyguard answer that...

“The more uneventful my job is, the better that is for you.”

Xavier gave his head a slow nod. He placed his hands on the wooden armrests of the chair and began rocking himself back and forth.

“Don’t you have any family - or… you know, isn’t someone expecting you to be—”

“I don’t,” Erik cut in, inadvertently harsh. “There’s no-one,” he added. He ducked his head to run his fingers over the pages of the book.

Xavier’s chair stopped rocking.

“Ah! Just the people I was looking for!”

The butler’s cheery voice interrupted whatever ridiculous apology Xavier was about decant, and Erik had never been happier to see the man.

“Charles, dear boy, I hope you know what tomorrow is,” he prompted, hands behind his back.

Xavier scratched his ear in thought. “Saturday, so… um… I don’t… recall.”

With a sigh, the butler revealed the invitation card he’d been holding behind his back. He waved it in front of the boy in reminder.

“The charity dinner in honour of your father. It’s tomorrow night. You promised you’d go.”

The boy’s head tipped backwards and he let out what sounded like a remorseful groan.

“What’s that I hear?”

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

“You’re even allowed to bring a plus-one.”

Xavier made a face. “Why not a minus-one. Then I wouldn’t have to go.”

The butler glared at the boy, impatiently tapping his foot, waiting for him to stop smiling at his own joke. Erik put his elbow on the armrest so he could cover his mouth with his fingers.

“Lots of people will be expecting to hear from you, Charles. Master Brian’s friends, colleagues—”

“It was his _colleague_ who killed him,” Charles pointed out sullenly, tracing a loose thread on his sweater.

Crouching down to meet his eyes, the butler gently replied, “I understand that. But there are also good people who care about your welfare, and organised the entire event hoping you will attend. And if it’s your safety you’re worried about, then you should know that’s no longer a problem. Mr Lehnsherr here will be escorting you at all times.”

Oh. Right. Of course.

Erik begged, absolutely _begged_ to differ, where Xavier’s safety was concerned, but all he could do was nod his head and reaffirm.

“He won’t let anything happen to you.”

Xavier watched his eyes as he nodded again. The boy shrugged, relenting. “Alright,” he mumbled.

“Good. Now come along with me.”

Just as they were leaving, the telephone rang. Erik almost bolted out of his chair to get it, but the butler was there already.

“Good evening, Xavier residence. Ah! Ms Frost. Yes, right away.”

He was gestured over to have the receiver. Erik calmly went to take it, thanking the man, then put it to his ear. He didn’t speak until he was certain both the boy and the butler had left.

“Frost, it’s me. I’m alone.”

“Oh, no offence sugar, but you’re really not my type.”

Erik rolled his eyes. “Listen it’s been… going well here. They trust me already.”

“ _Yeah._ That’s because they trust _me_.”

“And you were right, he doesn’t keep much company.”

“So how long ‘till I’m rich?”

Erik gritted his teeth. “I need to wait for the right time. You said I have two months.”

“The longer you take, the more difficult you’ll be making it for yourself.”

That would be the best advice she’d ever given him.

He should’ve listened.

\---

In all honesty, he didn’t know what to expect when they got there. He imagined a selection of dismayed rich people gathered around a dinner table, but he couldn’t be more wrong.

Xavier was silent when the car pulled up at the front of a lavish hotel, ushers instantly appearing at each door to let them both out. Their chauffeur went ahead into the parking lot as they headed into the reception, and unlike the other guests, they were herded right into the hall without delay. Xavier was approached numerous times by various people—some offering condolences, some sharing anecdotes about his late father, while others inquired about his health. When they were seated at a front table, a small crowd had gathered, and by now even Erik could tell that the boy’s weary smile was fighting to stay on his face. The more he was told about his father—how they had the same eyes, the same intellectual prowess—the more his expression wilted.

The stage was taken, eventually, the speaker requesting silence before he began his speech. He dove into a detailed presentation about Brian Xavier, which meticulously documented the man’s professional work and research projects as a prolific nuclear scientist, and then ended with a long eulogy about what a wonderful friend, husband, and father he was.

With his alcoholic wife, Erik thought, his deceitful friends, and his son who was currently—

Gone.

Erik searched the room as wine glasses were raised for a toast, and only belatedly realised that the restroom door was still swinging from impact.

He surreptitiously loped out of the hall and into the restroom, finding relief in the sight of Xavier leaning over a sink, a hand clutching his chest.

“Hey, you okay there?” he asked, uncertain of whether he even should be.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” the boy answered. “This suit’s uncomfortable,” he insisted, loosening his tie. He looked up into the mirror, at his reflection, then glanced at Erik’s above. The boy’s eyes were welled up, his mouth downturned.

“Should I… can I… um, do you need—anything?”

He was hellishly terrible at this.

“No, I’m good.” Xavier scrubbed a hand over his face, then screwed the tap open. He splashed water over his face three times. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Erik muttered.

“Sorry if I scared you. I know you’re only trying to be helpful.”

Erik swallowed.

“I just,” the boy heaved a sigh, his face dripping wet as he stood to his full height. “This whole thing is _weird_. All these people talking about my father—like, like he was this _amazing_ person who did magnificent things. And I can’t… I don’t _know_ this person they’re talking about. I didn’t know him at all.” The boy shook his head, beads of water falling from his hair. “I’m terrible, aren’t I?”

“No.”

Xavier looked up at him with watery eyes. Erik ripped off a sheet of paper towel and handed it to the boy.

“You’re not terrible. It’s not your fault he didn’t have any time for you.”

“Isn’t it? And—what if I had pleaded with him to spend time with me, would I be feeling worse right now? Having had cheerful memories with him? Is the feeling of not knowing who my father even _was_ supposed to be a small mercy?”

That was a great deal of sadness coming from such a small voice, and it made Erik forget, for a while, why he was even here, what he was supposed to be doing.

He stepped closer to the boy and waited for their gazes to meet.

“I was about your age when I lost both of my parents. They were all I had, so yes... I was extremely close to them.” Erik scuffed his foot against the tiles. “I was hurt and angry and I couldn’t even deal with the pain. My life was suddenly bereft of the people it revolved around. It was hard for me to cope and move on.”

He was about to continue, perhaps go too far, but Xavier had his hands held up.

“Oh dear—I’m—I didn’t mean to sound so self-centered, I really didn’t—”

“No I _understand_ what you’re trying to say.” He’d had an awful lot of time to think about it, too, behind dull grey walls. “You shouldn’t feel bad if it hasn’t… affected you. I know I constantly wished it would hurt less.”

“I’m sorry it hurt so much.” Xavier lowered his gaze, tucking a damp lock of hair behind his ear.

“I’m sorry you were forced to get used to their absence,” Erik said in response, heavy-hearted.

Xavier lifted and dropped a shoulder, like it was _nothing_ , as he mopped his face dry. His eyes gradually flitted up towards Erik’s again, and it seemed like he was shyly peering up from beneath his lashes, hoping Erik was looking back.

There was a strange intensity to their silent exchange. Erik shouldn’t be looking back so boldly, that he knew, but he shouldn’t have spoken to the boy about something so personal either, and he shouldn’t have even started a conversation, just tugged the kid out and told him to suck it up.

So this quiet moment of eye contact was harmless in the bigger picture.

“I want to go home,” the boy whispered finally. “Please?”

Erik nodded. “Alright.”

They slipped out through the fire exit and remained unnoticed as they headed out into the parking lot for their car, Erik informing the chauffeur it was time to go.

Xavier rubbed his eyes as he got inside, making a small noise of contentment when Erik joined him, their shoulders touching.

The boy remained leaning against him throughout the journey home. Eventually his head found support on Erik’s shoulder, and his legs came up on the seat. He’d fallen asleep, and Erik didn’t dare to move once, even telling their driver to go slow and stay on the smooth roads. It kept the ride peaceful for them both, but presented a problem when Xavier was too heavily asleep to be woken up.

Erik attempted to shake him awake, but the boy was open-mouthed and dreaming and nothing about his angelic sleeping face could’ve convinced Erik to disturb him.

He opened the car door and gathered Xavier into his arms, keeping the boy’s head secure on his shoulder as he carried him out into the night air. He was relatively light, and his hair smelled vaguely like citrus, curling around his cheeks as it dried.

The staircase was slightly difficult, the bedroom door even more so, but by the time Erik had placed the boy onto his bed, he was still deep asleep. Sighing, he sat down to take off his shoes, then gently slipped Xavier’s blazer off his shoulders.

His eyes fell on the tie still around Xavier’s neck. Without thinking, he reached down to carefully tug it off so it irritated him no further. It left the boy’s pale throat visible.

Erik could take his gun. He could have Charles Xavier dead with one bullet straight to his neck, and he could place the gun inside Xavier’s hand before he left, and it would have suicide written all over it: unable to handle the grief of his father’s passing—not to mention how his early departure from the function tonight would substantiate that claim—and separation from his mother, the boy takes his own life with a shot to the neck, painless.

It could be that simple.

And it would all be even between him and Frost, and the tall boy called Hank might cry for a few days, and maybe the butler would too, Sharon Xavier might not even be told, and everything would just go back to normal in no time, and Erik—

Wasn’t ready for that to happen.

Not yet.

He stood up, tossing the boy’s tie and blazer onto a chair. It would be a cold night without the duvet covers, so instead of maneuvering the boy, Erik fetched a blanket from another room and draped it over his sleeping form.

Then he left, feeling more satisfied than he might’ve done if Xavier was shot dead, and—maybe that was the important thing.

For now.

Coward, he was a coward.


	2. Chapter 2

Over the next few days, more opportunities came and went.

Xavier could be studying, sleeping, sitting aimlessly in the garden or the balcony—and every time it would dawn on Erik that whatever he was doing would be the last thing he’d ever do.

And he would falter.

He was no saint. He’d felt no guilt in watching Shaw bleed and die, but that man was the reason his parents, his youth, his _freedom_ was taken away from him, and so far all Xavier had done was make him smile.

Erik was on his way to the gym when he bumped into the boy, both of them backing away in alarm as they apologized.

“Heading for a workout?” Xavier asked, eyes rooted to Erik’s face as though the rest of him was offensive to look at.

“Yes. You?”

“Was _going_ to make myself a cup of tea but…” Xavier tapped his lip with his forefinger, thoughtful. “Maybe I’ll join you?”

“Join me? In the gym?”

“Some exercise will only do me good. I’ve been sitting down all day.” He rolled his shoulders in show. “That’s if you don’t mind the company.”

“Not at all,” Erik said carefully. Xavier beamed.

“Excellent! Wait up for me,” he called, bolting down the hallway and into his bedroom. He emerged three minutes later in a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeved t-shirt, grinning to his ears.

Twenty minutes later, that grin was nowhere to be seen.

He’d started off valiantly, speeding on the treadmill without much trouble, then completing laps on the bicycle with convincing ease—but then came the weights, and Xavier started to deteriorate limb by limb, sweating a puddle onto the carpet as he tried to finish his sixth wobbly push-up. Erik held his feet down and shouted encouragements as the boy begged off doing any more than a dozen sit-ups, collapsing. He was too shattered to even react as Erik broke into laughter, his eyes glazed with a look of betrayal.

“I should’ve just had a cup of tea,” he admitted, dazed.

Erik sobered after a while, jumping to his feet and offering a hand to help Xavier up. Groaning, he took it, and allowed himself to be pulled all the way up—Erik had to quickly keep a grip on Xavier’s back so he didn’t flop right back down.

“I can’t feel my legs,” he gasped.

Erik chuckled, “You might have overworked yourself for the first day.”

“Ha! Make this first and _last._ ”

With a sympathetic pat, Erik moved to lead them out, letting Xavier use him for support again.

“Same time tomorrow?” he asked as they reached the boy’s bedroom doorway, earning himself a rotten glare.

“There’ll be nothing left of me tomorrow.” Xavier made his way in with a slight limp. “You’re my bodyguard, you’re meant to _guard_ my body, not—not disassemble it.” With a huff, he sat down to take his shoes and socks off.

“Noted,” Erik said silently. The boy stood up and hobbled into the en suite bathroom, and a sound emitted like the cascade of water, though heavier, like the shower. Erik made to leave, then stopped to call out, “I’ll see you at dinner, then,” but there was no reply.

He was bathing. Worn out, and bathing.

Xavier couldn’t be more unsuspecting.

But Erik was feeling like a coward today as well.

He shut the door, turned around, and left.

\---

Xavier hardly left his study for the next week. The butler seemed completely unfazed by his constant absence from meals, simply taking a tray up to the boy instead. Erik was passing by the corridor when he heard Xavier being admonished for leaving his food untouched again, and after the butler had made his exit, Erik headed in.

“Are you going to shout at me too?” the boy mumbled through a mouthful of bread, quickly tearing another piece and stuffing it in his mouth too. “ _See._ I’m eatin’.”

Erik shot him a look of approval, tucking his hands into his pockets as he explored the study.

“Final exam?” he asked, absently spinning a desktop globe. Xavier let out an anguished noise as he nodded. As though he had anything to be worried about. Erik stopped in front of a cabinet decked entirely in awards, and they were all addressed to the younger Xavier. There was a display of everything from Spelling Bee to Science Research Scholarship awards, certificates of outstanding achievements, newspaper cut-outs of praising articles. Erik was about to express some sort of awe to the seventeen year old when his eye was captured by the glassy reflection of something behind him.

The last time he’d seen a chessboard was the last time he played, back in Germany in his grandparent’s cottage. Back then, pondering over strategies, he hadn’t known just how much peace his life had until it was taken away from him.

He walked briskly over to it, immediately picking up the first playing piece he saw and trying to remember its name and moves.

“Do you play?” he heard the boy ask, all irritably cheery and hopeful.

“I did… I used to, all the time.” He put the piece back down. “When I was younger. With my father.”

“We could have a game now, if you’re alright with it.”

Erik glanced over his shoulder at Xavier, who nodded in emphasis before rising from his seat, tray of food in tow. He set the tray down on a stool, then strolled over to where Erik stood, seizing the chessboard. When Erik looked down at him, there was a coy smile on his face—and food still in his cheeks. It made him look like a hamster.

“I didn’t say I wanted to.”

Xavier blinked slowly. Then his lips formed a pout.

“Fine.” Erik raised his hands in surrender. “I just thought you’d rather study.”

He pulled a chair up to the stool and waited for Xavier to settle in the couch opposite.

“Don’t make me feel bad about taking a study break or I _will_ start crying,” he said, replacing the tray of food with the chessboard so he could eat while he set up the pieces.

“I might need you to refresh my memory a bit,” Erik said, tugging up his sleeves before resting his elbows on his knees. Xavier watched him for a while, then bowed his smiling face. He didn’t forget to offer Erik his food before they began playing.

For two people who hadn’t played in a while, the game turned out to be just as rusty as they expected. Erik felt like an utter fool for being completely willing when Xavier asked him to play the same time, tomorrow.

\---

Frost had sent him a package the next day. It was a cell phone, an expensive one he couldn’t even decipher, and he quickly stuffed it inside his jacket pocket before setting off down the stairs.

Today Xavier had demanded to be walked to school hours early, and they did so silently, the boy’s vision obscured by his books. More than once Erik had to steer him away from walking into a tree, and as they continued down their path with Erik vigilant and Xavier completely preoccupied, it felt like his life had taken on a completely new motive.

He had to constantly remind himself: his role was one thing, and his _duty_ was something else entirely. He was here for a reason, and it wasn’t to sleep in a cosy king-sized bed and wake up to appetizing meals and warn the entitled young heir of the Xavier fortune when a step was coming up.

It would never be that simple.

Erik managed to keep himself busy with his brand new gadget for the two hours of Xavier’s exam, trying to figure out its features and working out its functions. He’d successfully been able to record a video of unmoving grass after the realisation that he wasn’t taking a picture.

Xavier came out of the exam hall looking ragged. He smiled at the sight of Erik walking towards him, but he mostly looked like he was ready to sleep for an entire day.

“Hi,” he mumbled. “The exam was good.” He nodded with a yawn, dragging his rucksack behind him. “But I’m absolutely knackered.”

Erik glanced at him sympathetically as they exited the building and left for their journey, and as always, nobody came near either of them.

Xavier walked sluggishly. The air was frigid and fierce today, and Erik was powering ahead before he even knew what he was doing, too focused on generating body heat. He stopped and walked back for the boy, who quickly picked up his pace. Erik sighed, then took Xavier’s rucksack from him, hauling it over his shoulder. He’d forgotten just how many books the boy liked to carry, and this time Xavier shot him a look of sympathy before he marched on. Then he heard the boy run over to his side and clutch his elbow with his partly gloved hand, and it felt worryingly natural to have the boy closely hanging on to him as they walked home.

As expected, Xavier slept until the evening. Dinner was being prepared when he came into the kitchen, and every time he smiled and politely greeted everyone around him Erik was reminded of how this boy’s life was in his own hands.

“Nice to see you joining us again,” said one of the chefs, when Xavier sat down at the table next to Erik. He ate gleefully, consuming twice as much as he usually would. The conversation between the staff and the boy continued without any addition from Erik, and as he rose from his seat to put his dishes away, Xavier was quick to catch him by the wrist.

“You haven’t forgotten, right? In my study for chess later on?”

Erik’s eyes flickered away from the grip of Xavier’s fingers to his face. He gave an unsteady nod.

“Brilliant! I’ll see you then.”

\---

Frost picked up after two rings. Erik checked both ends of the hallway before shutting his door and retreating to the farthest end of his room to speak.

“I know you’re not going to like the sound of this, but—”

“Then hold it. It’s been almost two weeks, Lehnsherr. You know exactly what I want to hear.”

Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. All he could think about was Xavier grinning over a victory as he caught one of Erik’s pieces from the chessboard and toppled over a few others while he did so.

“I’m getting death threats and deadlines and evacuation notices here. I do so hope you’re not enjoying your freedom too much.”

When he was cut off, Erik hurled his phone at the opposite wall.

He spent a moment relaxing his breath, then an hour in the gym, before he met Xavier in his study in front of a chessboard where they played into the early hours of the next day.

\---

One evening, Xavier was getting drunk.

Erik had swept into his study to find the boy clutching a tall bottle of champagne and sitting sprawled across the sofa with a glass balanced on his stomach.

“What are you doing?” Erik asked, shutting the door behind him.

Xavier acknowledged him with a toothy smile, his chin lifting. He continued to pour champagne into the glass, and when some of it overflowed, he precariously carried it to his mouth and licked the excess dripping from the rim.

He certainly wasn’t going to watch his sober.

“Where can I get a glass?”

Xavier pointed to one on his desk, and Erik immediately went over to get it. Instead of letting Xavier do the honours, he took the bottle from him and filled his own glass, then sat down at his usual seat to savour it slowly. It’d been so painfully long since he’d had a good sip of alcohol, and even when he did frequently indulge, he’d never been able to afford something this rich, of this quality. The room was warm, despite the weather outside, and the chess pieces had already been set. Xavier looked like he was enjoying himself just as much, sitting across from him.

“Do you make a habit of getting drunk after exams?”

Xavier clicked his tongue. “Why are you asking so many _questions_?”

Then he sat up, placing his drink on the stool between them. He stared down at the chessboard, barked a laugh, then widened his eyes.

“If you want to ask me a question, you have to win my piece first,” Xavier decided, licking his lips. “In the same way, if I win your piece, I get to ask you something. Anything I want to know about you.”

Erik considered it. He took another sip, and the idea started to get better. “Hmm.”

“Of course, family is off-limits,” Xavier stated casually. “But that’s the deal.”

“Let’s go,” Erik said, sliding to the edge of his seat. Xavier looked extremely pleased, and began with a confident pursuit for Erik’s pawn. When he had it, he held it between his fingertips, thinking deeply.

“I want to know… How old are you?”

Erik squinted. “Thirty. I think. Give or take.”

Xavier giggled behind his glass. “You’re not sure?”

“Is that another question?”

“Is _that_ a question? You haven’t won any of mine!”

“Touché.”

Three moves later, Erik captured the boy’s rook. Triumphant, he drank another mouthful from his glass.

“What are you… going to do… with all the money you inherit.”

Xavier pursed his lips in deep contemplation. “I’ve never thought about it.”

Erik raised his brows.

“I suppose I’ll stuff it all in a bank. I’ve always wanted to open my own school, it could go to that.”

“Not a bad idea,” he muttered, finishing off his glass. “Alright, your move.”

Xavier’s attack crept up on him when he’d least expected it. He took another one of Erik’s pawns.

“What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?”

“Depends on what you think strange is. Slugs?” Erik watched the boy shrug. “Back in Germany we have a very popular stew consisting of vinegar, peppercorns, and blood.”

Shuddering, Xavier downed more of his drink. He gestured for Erik to continue.

It was a while before Erik’s defence weakened and earned Xavier another one of his pieces.

Xavier held the knight like it was the key to all of Erik’s secrets.

They were both buzzed out of their heads. It was a surprise their game was still even going on. Xavier was wearing a dressing gown that did a poor job of hiding his chest, and the skin of his neck was quite clearly damp with sweat or spilled champagne—Erik couldn’t even tell. All he knew was that he wasn’t looking at Xavier’s face while the boy was thinking and suddenly he was snapping his fingers to get Erik’s attention.

“Oi! Alright. I want to know… hmm… how about… when did you have your very first kiss?”

Erik jutted his head back. He wasn’t in school when it happened. He was most definitely avoided by every person who went to school with him, including the teachers. He wasn’t exactly _friendly_. And then there was his employer’s daughter, and her lips were the first he’d ever tasted, and Erik was...

“Nineteen. When I was nineteen.”

“Nineteen?! You’re lying, you couldn’t have—”

“Yes I was nineteen,” he retorted, defensive. “How old were you, then, sixteen?”

“No, by sixteen I’d had—oh hold on a minute! That’s another question!” Xavier pointed at Erik with alarm.

Erik frowned. “What had you done by sixteen?”

Xavier gave him a dazzling smirk. “You have to win one of my pieces, first.”

Aggravated, Erik blindly went for Xavier’s nearest piece, even though that left his own undoubtedly vulnerable for the taking.

“What did you do when you were sixteen?”

Xavier poured himself more champagne, even topping off Erik’s glass for him. “You mean what _didn’t_ I do.”

Erik huffed and finished his glass in one go. “If that’s easier.”

“Well.” Xavier put his feet up so his knees were up to his chin. “I had sex for the first time when I was sixteen. But don’t worry, it was with a friend, and we talked about it beforehand.”

A friend? The only person Erik ever saw Xavier even talk to was—

“Hank? The tall boy?”

Xavier rolled his eyes with a look of faint annoyance. “ _No_. It wasn’t Hank.” He blinked at Erik. “Did you think I was gay?”

Truthfully, Erik wasn’t thinking at all. He was still absorbing the information that Xavier was only a year younger than he was now when he’d first lost his virginity.

“I don’t know, I just assumed. Hank is the only person I’ve seen you talking to.”

“Oh, I guess, fair enough then. It was actually a girl, Moira. She’s moved away now, so I don’t see her anymore, and you’ve totally asked more questions than you’re meant to.”

“You’re just too interesting.” Erik took another long swallow from his drink.

“But what you really think is that I’m disgraceful,” Xavier drawled, looking at his glass gloomily. “I don’t mind if you do.”

“I don’t,” Erik snapped. “I’m nobody to judge, after all. My first time was with a complete stranger in a stolen police car.”

“Oh dear lord,” the boy began to smile again. “That’s incredible.”

“What’s incredible is how I’ve lived to tell the story.”

“Certainly.” Xavier was about to resume the game, but then he peered up at Erik again, a playful gleam in his narrowed blue eyes. “That must’ve been quite exciting. For the man or woman, whoever it was.”

Erik matched Xavier’s assessing gaze, hoping to hell that he was sober enough to distinguish what the boy was implying.

“So you’re saying having sex with my former, amateur self inside a vehicle while committing _theft_ would’ve been ‘quite exciting’.”

“And you didn’t immediately say that it was a woman, so now I know what I’m going to ask next.”

Xavier easily took the piece Erik had already given up with his queen.

“Have you ever pleasured a man?”

Erik spluttered at Xavier’s phrasing. “You’d have to ask him.”

“So you have,” Xavier concluded.

“My first time in the police car was with a woman, but yes, I have… you know,” Erik paused, shifting in his seat. “I hope you forget all of this tomorrow.”

“Unfortunately, I have an amazing memory.”

“I keep thinking you’re a young boy I shouldn’t even be telling all of this to.”

Xavier waved a hand through the air. “I lost my innocence a long time ago.”

“I can see that,” Erik said, amused, nodding at the glass of champagne Xavier was clutching.

“Stop rambling, tell me about the men you’ve fucked.”

Erik had to finish the rest of his drink. “I was… I have no clue how old I was or who it even was, I just remember being horny. We were both very horny.”

Xavier leaned forward, looking completely inebriated and captivated at the same time. “Uh-huh.”

“And I remember how good it felt even though I knew how wrong it was. It felt kind of addictive, that whole push-pull of wrong and right battling inside of you…” Erik covered his face with his hands, rubbing his eyes. “It’s been so damn long.”

His last encounter had been in prison, but that was years before his release. The last time he’d had another body around his was _years_ ago.

He removed his hands to see Xavier with one hand in his ruffled hair and the other one low on his stomach. His glass was empty and his bottom lip was captured beneath his teeth.

Erik looked away—at the desktop globe behind Xavier’s head, the awards cabinet, the chess game in front of them.

“Ah. You’ve got me in checkmate.”

“Hmm?” Xavier perked up and followed Erik’s eyes. “So I do.”

“No way out for me,” he calculated. “Shouldn’t we… go to bed now?”

The boy ogled him for another while before getting ahold of himself.

“Right! Yes, okay, bedtime.” He rose from the couch with a wobble, then walked around Erik to get to the door. “Good night,” he called.

Erik stood up, just as ungraceful, and returned the words. “Good night.”

When Xavier slipped away, Erik sank back down into his chair, feeling feverish and winded and like he’d just made his life a great deal harder.

\---

The next morning, Erik woke up feeling completely disoriented.

He was about to flee to the bathroom to get ready to take Xavier to school, but then the reminder slowly set in, that he had no classes today.

Erik groaned. He wanted nothing more than to get back under the sheets and sleep, but now there was a knock on the door, followed by Xavier’s joyful voice telling him to come down for breakfast.

His hope that Xavier might have forgotten last night was a futile one.

Xavier smiled at him throughout breakfast as though he knew just about every dirty thought that had ever graced his mind, but what really unsettled Erik was just how revolted Xavier would be if he really did come to know everything about him.

They played chess again that evening, but without the stakes or the liquor. Xavier retired early insisting he was feeling poorly, and Erik was left alone to roam the spacious corners of the mansion.

\---

Erik ate breakfast on his own. The boy was bedridden upstairs, apparently having caught a flu so formidable that his sneezes were echoing through the house. Erik hesitantly made his way in, finding the boy piled under blankets and surrounded by a littering of tissues.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, placing the bowl of soup down on the tray by Xavier’s bed, the same bowl he’d taken from the butler so he could finagle his way into the boy’s room. It was dark already, and when he crossed the room, he saw the window sill was covered with a layer of frost. He was suddenly reminded of its namesake, and turned to look at Xavier—all bundled inside thick wools with a red, sniffling nose, completely susceptible to any attempt at his life that Erik could make.

“Don’t come near me,” the boy begged with a weak, groggy voice. “I’m contagious.”

“I have a very good immune system,” he replied, but after drawing the curtains closed, he left Xavier alone.

And yet, that was exactly what he couldn’t do.

When Frost would finally deem him incompetent for this job, he may be relieved of this duty—but that would only mean someone else would do what he couldn’t. And they’d do it without spending nights playing chess with Xavier, without ever having carried the boy home while he was sleeping, without even knowing what made him tear up and break down.

They’d do it so _easily_ , and so Erik couldn’t leave him alone.

\---

It took two days for Xavier to convalesce.

He was completing his fourth lap around the mansion’s grounds when he spotted a healthier, bright-faced Xavier sitting at the steps outside the front entrance.

“I have to go collect my results tomorrow,” he announced, brushing a thread of hair away from his face. “Just thought you should know. Bright and early tomorrow. You’ve been sleeping in till late recently.”

Erik placed a foot on a high step and stretched each leg. “Thanks for the heads up,” he said, wincing at a sudden cramp. “You should go inside, it’s freezing.”

Xavier was cocooned in three blankets and even had a pair of frazzled fingerless gloves on, but he was still recovering from a rather vicious few days of fever.

“It’s dinner time,” Xavier pointed out, getting to his feet. Apparently that was also Erik’s cue to follow the boy and make his way back inside.

“Be careful, it’s slippery,” he warned, his hand inadvertently hovering at Xavier’s back as he boarded the steps up to the door. It was his own foot that he’d forgotten, paralysed by the cramp travelling down his heel and the numbing cold, that failed to cooperate with his own movements.

Grappling for the air, he fell forward onto the steps, both palms landing on the hard, icy concrete in front of him.

Xavier crouched down with a gasp, which turned into a poorly concealed chortle of laughter, and then a squeal as he helped Erik back up onto his feet and assisted him up the remaining steps and through the door.

Dinner was hot from the oven and satiated his need for something warm to ooze down his throat and it was so much of a luxury that he felt mortified for getting so used to it all.

After their usual rounds of chess, Erik was loping back to his room when he heard Xavier call out for him.

He was stationed at his window and signalling Erik to run over, a finger pointed out towards the field in front of the mansion.

“There’s someone there,” Xavier claimed, directing Erik’s gaze to the tree. “Can you see?”

Erik craned his neck to get a look, but it was too dark—they waited for movement, a flash of skin or clothes to prove Xavier wasn’t just being paranoid, but then—

“There! He’s leaving! On the left, can you…”

“I see him.” Erik swallowed, gripping Xavier by the shoulder. The figure retreating from the mansion disappeared for him again, but left him feeling fraught with dread. He turned to look at the boy, both hands now clutching him around each of his elbows. “Don’t worry about it, alright. He’s gone.”

Xavier nodded, looking more outwardly calm than Erik was.

“I’m not scared, I just—find it strange that somebody’s roaming out here at this time.”

“It’s okay if you’re scared.” Erik gave him a gentle squeeze.

“But I’m _not_ ,” he quipped, letting out a small, airy laugh. “Are you?”

Erik huffed, letting go of Xavier in favour of shutting the window that was wide open. He struggled with it until it slammed abruptly into place.

“You shouldn’t open the window if you see someone outside,” he told the boy hoarsely.

“I didn’t open the window.”

Sighing, he turned around to glare at him.

“You didn’t open the window, is that right? Then who did?”

Xavier shrugged, leaning against the wall. “I didn’t open it. It’s too cold, why would I?”

“There’s no way that man came all the way—no, that.” Erik scratched his head, placing a hand on his hip. “He can’t have done that. You must’ve forgotten.”

The boy pressed his lips together.

“I’m going to bed. You too.” Erik breezed past him to the door. “Good night.”

Then he paused, his hand around the door knob.

“Sleep in one of the other rooms,” he added, before shutting the door and walking away.

He was hardly able to rest that night, wondering if he should’ve just slept on the floor in Xavier’s room instead of leaving the boy unprotected.

Which would be the first time he’d actually abided by Frost’s orders.


	3. Chapter 3

Erik successfully coaxed Xavier into making the trip to college by car, and by doing so avoided both elusive strangers and slippery footpaths.

There was a notable commotion inside. Xavier ran ahead of him into the building and returned with an enormous grin. Erik thought he would be the first to know, but soon the boy had collided into someone else, someone who he began chattering to.

It wasn’t even a boy, it seemed like he was much older than any of the other students here, but too informally dressed and unkempt to be a teacher. He leaned towards Xavier and read off the paper in front of them, then gave the boy an impressed smirk.

Erik took an automatic step closer.

They continued to enthusiastically converse without stopping, and for every moment Xavier’s beady blue eyes glimpsed towards his acquaintance's sideburns, Erik was moving nearer to them. Until he was right in their space.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” he intervened, folding his arms in front of his chest.

Xavier finally broke eye contact to spare him a glance. He looked mildly annoyed by Erik’s active intrusion, but he smiled placidly nonetheless.

“Of course,” he began, placing a hand on Erik’s shoulder. “This is Logan,” he said, lifting a hand in said person’s direction.

Erik stared at him expectantly.

“And?”

“ _And_ he’s a senior here,” he nodded.

“So how do you two know each other?”

“We were both in the Student Union.”

Logan nudged Xavier. “Is this your mom?”

Xavier nudged Logan back, grinning uncontrollably. Erik took another step forward.

“I’m his bodyguard,” he declared, hiking his hands on his hips and insinuating himself between them so Xavier was behind him. “How—”

“Alright, so this is grand,” Xavier interjected, forcing Erik’s hands to drop by his sides. He then tugged him back a few steps before turning to face Logan. “We’ll just be a second, excuse us.”

Then Xavier pulled him away by the arm until they were isolated.

“What’s wrong with you?!” he hissed.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this person?”

“I didn’t think it was necessary! Oh come on, for the love of God, it’s not like he’s a threat.”

Erik critically eyed Logan from afar. “He could be.”

Xavier clamped his hands together in front of his chest. “He said I’ve been invited to a Christmas party on the weekend. And I’m going.”

Erik raised an eyebrow. “You are?”

“Yes. I am.”

Xavier rose to the tip of his toes.

“No, you’re not. You’re not going to a party.”

He dropped back down to his regular height.

“You don’t get to decide that! I’ve _never_ been invited to a house party—this is a really big deal for me, and I really want to go.”

“You’re seventeen years old. Everyone at this party will be older than you.”

“Is that supposed to make me not want to go? Like how there’ll be alcohol there?”

“And you’re still carrying a bit of a cold, you know that.”

“I’ll be perfectly fine by the end of the week, that’s ridiculous.”

Erik was about to offer another excuse, but then Xavier crept closer to him, his hands still poised in front of him like he was pleading.

“Please? Erik?”

Oh, no. Xavier couldn’t just use his name like that with his big expressive eyes boring into his own like he’d be the cruellest person to deny him this.

And since when did Erik start caring for the person he’s meant to kill?

“Fine,” he gritted out. “But don’t expect me to let you out of my sight for even a second.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Xavier said, ecstatic, before rejoining Logan who was still stood waiting for him. They spoke some more, Xavier pointed towards Erik with an apologetic smile, before parting with a hug.

During their ride home, Xavier finally showed Erik his results sheet.

“Full marks in everything,” he informed, then turned back around to face the window.

“Well done,” Erik said, giving the boy a light pat on his knee. “That’s exceptional.”

When Erik looked away, he could sense Xavier’s gaze turn to him, then felt him sliding closer.

“You know… it’s not _essential_ that you come with me to the party. You’ll only get bored.”

Erik shook his head obstinately. “I don’t care, I’m still coming with you.”

Xavier tutted, insisting, “But it’s not like anything will happen to me. And there will be plenty of people there. I’ll be with Logan the whole time—he said he’s only coming if I do—and having my bodyguard follow me around will be completely inconvenient. It could _scare_ people.”

“You don’t understand,” he argued, because Xavier really didn’t understand at all, and there was no way Erik could convey it to him either. “Your safety cannot be compromised for the sake of people’s enjoyment at a party.”

“It’s a matter of a few hours inside a person’s home,” Xavier said, sounding incredulous.

“It’s not that _simple_. You don’t understand and I certainly don’t expect you to understand just how difficult this is. We’re not—I don’t want to discuss this further.” Erik was out of the car before the driver had even hit the brakes and parked. He sprinted towards the door and almost stepped on the butler’s foot as he tried to make his way past him and up the stairs to his room.

How would Xavier understand the necessity of Erik’s presence? After all, he was having a hard time even convincing himself that he cared this much about Xavier’s life.

Erik shucked off his jacket and then his turtleneck, chucking them both on the ground. He sat on his ridiculous four-poster bed in just his vest and dropped his head into his hands.

Perhaps killing Xavier would’ve been easier after all. If only he wasn’t so _damn likeable_ , then Erik’s entire life would continue to consist of raw hatred and he wouldn’t be feeling like this.

And now Xavier was knocking on his door.

“I’m coming in,” he said lowly, before entering Erik’s room and audibly closing the door behind him. Erik was sitting facing away from the door, with his back to Xavier, and he didn’t move once as the boy quietly cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry, Erik. I’m really sorry.”

The bed shifted, and suddenly Xavier was shifting closer to him, until his voice was directly behind him.

“You were right, I don’t understand how difficult this is for you… and how many sacrifices you’ve made to be here, devoting yourself to protecting me all the time.”

Erik shut his eyes and heaved a sigh.

“I want you to know that I really do appreciate everything you’re doing for me. I didn’t know—I couldn’t _imagine_ someone could care about me so much. I’m so sorry for how demanding I was being.”

And then he felt arms hesitantly embrace him from behind, hands wrapping around his torso, a cheek pressed against his own. Erik wanted to shrug the boy away at once, but—

He felt so warm.

“Will you forgive me Erik?”

The boy’s breath was in his ear. When Erik nodded, Xavier pressed his lips hard against his jaw. It was such a strange, unforgettable sensation that Erik could still feel moments after, when Xavier had moved to sit next to him instead, when he was speaking, when they weren’t even touching.

“So… do you celebrate Christmas?”

Erik snorted. “I’m Jewish.”

“Oh.” Xavier tucked his hands under his thighs. “Oh! So do you celebrate Hanukkah? Isn’t it—what’s the date—shouldn’t Hanukkah already have started?”

Erik shrugged.

“Don’t you do anything for Hanukkah? Well that’s alright if you don’t, we could do something together, maybe I could—”

“Maybe not,” he bit out, rising to his feet. “I don’t give a damn about celebrating anything.”

He walked around the bed to his closet, picking out the clothes he wore for his workout and when he shut the door, it closed with a louder force than was intended.

Xavier let himself out soon after.

\---

Dinner was eerily silent.

Erik kept torturing himself by replaying what had happened earlier, but not the part where he’d cut Xavier off or acted coldly, but rather the part where the boy had come in and linked his arms around Erik’s waist and kissed Erik’s face.

He still knew exactly where he’d done it, like it was branded on him with a hot iron.

Xavier scoffed his dinner down at an exceedingly fast pace, wiped his face with a napkin, and then excused himself to leave.

The butler was quick to stop him on his way and assess him with a hand to his forehead, then sit him back down in his chair.

“Have you checked your temperature?” he inquired.

“I’m fine,” Xavier moaned, sounding a whole decade younger than he was.

“Is this about your results? Were they not good?”

“No, they were good.”

Erik set his fork down to say, “He got one hundred percent in all of his exams.”

The butler chuckled and held Xavier’s shoulders to give him a shake. The boy continued to stare at his shoes.

“You know I’m really proud of you, right?”

Xavier nodded after a while, though his head was bent so low that it hardly looked like one.

“We found some old Christmas decorations in the shed, you could help us put them up.”

Xavier looked reluctant, and it shattered Erik. Just a few hours ago he would’ve been delighted by the prospect.

“Not this year,” he mumbled, standing up. This time he went to deposit his plate in the kitchen sink before he left.

Erik didn’t follow him.

He didn’t need to; the boy was sitting in his study at their usual chess playing time.

Erik folded himself into the seat opposite him and made the first move, a prompt for Xavier to look up from his book and react.

“I probably should have told you long ago that I’m not the easiest person to talk to.”

Xavier’s eyes shifted to the side, reading the board. He extended his arm and moved his first piece.

“I’m aggressive, I have a temper. I’ve never been a friendly person.”

“I don’t have a problem with that,” Xavier confessed, his eyes still scanning the board.

Xavier was so lonely here, of course he wouldn’t.

“Still.” Erik interlocked his fingers. “It’s no excuse for the fact that I was rude to you earlier.”

“I know,” the boy answered. “But it’s okay, because you care about me.”

He finally looked up at Erik.

“Don’t you?”

Erik narrowed his eyes as though he was befuddled by the two words.

“That’s why you were angry at me, that’s how you express it.” Xavier swung his legs around so he was sitting properly, facing Erik. “And I was being unreasonable, so you have a right to be angry at me. Now will you make the next move?”

“You don’t have to try and analyse every argument we have,” Erik said, obediently making his next move on the board.

“I do. For my peace of mind.”

Xavier had to be the strangest person he’d ever come across, but he was still going to be impossible to give up.

\---

Logan was, as promised, there to receive Xavier outside the house they ended up at. At the sight of Xavier, he’d discarded his cigarette under his boot and distracted the boy well enough that he’d hardly looked back as he stepped out of the car and ran over to greet him.

They strolled inside together while Erik was forced to follow behind. The stench of beer and the obnoxiously loud cacophony of music was so deterring that Erik began to wish he had listened to the boy and stayed home. The sheer amount of _people_ was unnerving, young adults with unabashed gazes and unpredictable intentions.

Xavier was already difficult to locate, but he could see Logan standing next to a table of refreshments, then making his way through a crowd to a brunet who was most definitely Charles. He was passing the boy a red cup, the contents of which he eagerly emptied down his throat. Logan was watching him with a smirk, his eyes never leaving him as he sipped from his own cup. Xavier pulled Logan closer by the neck to speak into his ear, intimate and brazen, and so utterly oblivious to anyone else around them.

Utterly oblivious to _Erik._

He couldn’t tell if he was feeling nervous or offended.

He _could_ feel—

Vibrations, powerfully jolting vibrations against his chest. His phone was ringing.

Which was excellent, because there was nothing he wanted to do more than hear Frost’s condescending tone.

No—what he really wanted to do was take Xavier back home and play chess with him until the sky was purple and their eyes were closing while Erik would realise he’d spared the boy another day and feel like Shaw hadn’t taken that humanity away from, not even though he’d taken away everything else.

He shook his head. Frost’s call wouldn’t end, so he forced his way back outside where it was quieter.

“This isn’t a good time,” he immediately told her, his breath puffing out visibly in front of him.

“Why aren’t you at the mansion?”

Erik froze.

“Shit, Fr—Emma, how do you know we’re not at the mansion?”

“Your phone, honey. The GPS has been enabled, it allows me to see where you are.”

Erik had no idea six years of prison could make him so technically challenged as to keep a location tracking device switched on in his phone. He dragged his hand down his face.

“I’m… we’re just… we’re at a person’s house for a gathering, it’s no big deal.”

“I know exactly where you are,” she said sourly. “Looks like Charles is having a _lot_ of fun at this party.”

Erik spun around where he was stood, searching the swarms of faces and rows of cars in the driveway.

“Emma don’t—don’t come near Xavier.”

“Who said _I’m_ coming anywhere near him.” She laughed, bitter. “You’re such a bastard, Lehnsherr. I bailed you out for you to go and do _this_?”

“No no listen to me Emma, whatever you’re doing, don’t.”

“Why, why shouldn’t I?”

Now Erik was undoubtedly scaring people, just as Xavier had feared, with the way he darted back and forth like a raving lunatic, nudging people aside. There was nobody out here that—Frost wouldn’t be coming, that’s what she’d stated, and—who was he even trying to find? A suspicious looking individual with Xavier on their kill order? The former could be just about every person here, and the latter was… _him_ , except—

“Emma, please, don’t do anything to the boy! _Please_!”

She hung up.

Erik dismembered his phone and launched its pieces against a low brick wall before heading back inside the house.

The person he should really be looking for was Xavier.

His goddamn heart was beating faster and louder than the music jarring the floor of the gigantic villa, and he was shoving aside everyone who came in his way as he sought the boy, doing a double take for every brown-haired male he saw.

He wouldn’t put it past Frost to have her dirty work done right here amongst a number of others at a party.

Erik had stepped over far too many feet to count and tipped over a plethora of drinks in his wake—his eyes fell on the winding staircase, and he dashed over to the landing, body ramming into another’s yet again.

But this was Logan.

Erik pulled him by the sleeve.

“Where’s Xavier?” he barked, loud enough that it couldn’t be mistaken. “And why isn’t he with you?”

“Hey, relax,” he said, shrugging Erik off. It made him so much angrier to see Logan look so smug and blithe and with the same lazy smirk as earlier but without his jacket and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone and that wasn’t any of his business, but all the same, Erik _sneered._ “He’s upstairs,” Logan said, then casually lifted his cup. “I was just getting him a drink, now chill the fuck out.”

“Which room? There are a thousand windows, how will I—”

Windows.

 _Verdammt_ windows.

Erik shoved Logan another time and darted his way up the stairs, nearly losing his balance as he reached the top floor. He barged into two empty rooms and interrupted a few make-out sessions trying to look for Xavier, but it was Logan who called him over to the room a few doors down.

“He’s in here,” Logan said—Erik hadn’t even realised he came back upstairs to show him, but he was glad—and opened the door to the room.

The first thing Erik saw was the window opposite, pulled completely open, and his hand was immediately going for his gun, his senses hyperaware to Xavier’s voice. Already, he was fearing the worst.

He couldn’t even see the boy at first.

He saw a figure in all black, covered from head to toe, and then he saw _red_.

It was a matter of two feet but it seemed like the longest distance he ever crossed, sprinting across the carpet with his gun clutched against his hip.

Xavier was standing against the wall opposite the man, his face upturned and squirming with pain. He had his hands up next to his neck, scrabbling at something - and the closer Erik came, the sooner he noticed the black-gloved hand covering his throat.

Erik lunged forward, seizing the man by his shoulders and hauling him back towards his own body, his gun dropping to the ground. With both hands free he could wrench the man’s arms back behind him, keeping his grip on both writhing wrists with all of the energy his anger was supplying.

Xavier had almost dropped to the ground the moment his attacker’s hands had withdrawn, and now he was leaning against Logan, panting for air.

Breathing. He was breathing, and now Erik could too.

“Is he alright?!” Erik bellowed at Logan, who gave him a silent nod. Xavier’s eyes were still blown wide and red, the veins on his neck concerningly visible beneath the skin of his flushed throat, but he managed to give a thumbs up in response to Erik’s inquiry.

Erik brought the man’s wrists higher on his back, causing him to double over. With that, Erik ducked to single-handedly retrieve his gun from the ground.

Xavier’s eyes fell on his movements.

“Don’t!” he rasped, flapping his hand through the air, indicating his desire to have Erik lower the gun from the man’s head. “Please,” he sounded out, before coughing into his shoulder.

Logan looked like he was about to pounce on the man Erik had restrained, and this could be dangerous, very dangerous for him and his secrecy, if he didn’t move fast—

“You stay here with him,” Erik instructed, authoritative like his role would suggest, before Logan could object. Even though he looked like he wanted nothing more than to tear the man apart for coming anywhere near his friend, he was just as reluctant to leave Xavier alone. Erik was thankful for it. He yanked the man closer by his wrists. “I’ll handle this.”

He herded him out and made sure to pull the door shut when they were out in the corridor. The man’s face was obscured by the motorbike helmet on his head, and Erik flattened the man against the wall so he could take it off without struggle.

“Frost changed her mind,” Erik told the man, now that he could be audible over the music. He ceased the grip on his wrists, just to make certain he meant no harm. “She doesn’t want him dead just yet.”

Erik still had his gun at his hip.

“The money she promised me?” asked the man, his eyes thinned to dark slits. He was thickset, his long blonde hair tied up into a ponytail and with what he supposed were disconcertingly sharp nails, he’d pinched Erik through the fabric of his gloves.

“She doesn’t have any money. You need to leave.”

“She _said_ —”

“It’s bullshit.” Erik’s hand had impulsively grabbed for his gun. “Outside,” he ordered.

Then, realisation dawned in shadowy eyes. “You’re the asshole bodyguard. Frost said you’d be here.”

“I’m the asshole bodyguard,” Erik admitted.

“And you sure she doesn’t want him dead?” The man sketched his bushy brow, a finger pointed at the door. Erik felt his anger surge again.

“I’m _certain._ ” He stepped closer to the man, forcing him to lift his head. “He can’t die just now, _do you understand_?”

The man snarled back at him, now keen to dismiss himself. He snatched his helmet back from Erik before he lumbered away, propping his head back inside. Erik stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t ever come back to the Xavier mansion.”

He pointedly transferred his gun into his jacket pocket, the implication unmistakable. Not only did the man look confused, but he also looked positively dissuaded from doing anything that didn’t involve getting the money _first_.

Erik watched him leave, content. He wasn’t concerned about what he’d tell Frost.

No—the only person he was concerned about was in room behind him.

\---

Xavier was sitting cross legged on the bed nursing a glass of water. Logan had very superfluously placed his own jacket around the boy’s shoulders, and had his eyes set on Xavier’s every move with a look of grim consternation. He’d muttered something quietly into his ear, insistent, but Xavier had very assuredly croaked out, “I’m perfectly fine,” until Logan edged away.

He flinched far worse than Xavier when Erik walked into the room.

“Who the fuck was that?” Logan questioned him with an impatient growl, the hand furthest away from Xavier curling into a tight fist.

And then Xavier turned to him, his voice scratchy, “Why did they want to kill me?”

Erik shut his eyes and kept them closed as he locked his jaw.

“I don’t know,” he ground out.

Xavier stood up, the jacket falling from his shoulders. “Was it… whoever killed my father, was it one of th—”

“All I know,” Erik said carefully, “is that nobody will hurt you from now on. I won’t let anyone come near you.”

“But—”

“That’s not good enough.”

It was Logan who had spoken now, also up on his feet to level his gaze with Erik’s.

“You just expect us to take your word on it? That the next time some faceless bastard crawls into his room, you’ll magically be there? Like you were today? Are you _shitting_ me?”

“Logan, be quiet,” Xavier blurted.

“No, Charles, I won’t.” He turned to look at the boy and gripped him firmly by the shoulders. “Whoever that was, they _knew_ where you were. They hunted you down in this enormous fuckin’ house and found you alone. This isn’t something we can ignore.”

Erik couldn’t take any more of this.

He wanted to send Xavier away to somewhere nobody would suspect, he wanted to handcuff the boy to himself and see what would happen if anyone dared to harm him, he wanted to disappear and forget Xavier ever happened to him and hope he’d never have to find out whether Emma Frost became filthy rich, or if Charles Xavier made a school.

He wanted none of _this_.

“Logan, I think you’re overreacting,” Xavier said, placing a hand on his forehead.

“And you were almost throttled, you’re not thinking straight,” Logan parried, reaching into his jeans’ pocket to fish for his cigarette pack.

“I trust Erik,” Xavier uttered. He looked so sincere that it made Erik want to turn his eyes away and never look his way ever again. “He was the one who kept insisting on accompanying me here. If he hadn’t put his foot down about coming, I might have…” he sighed, shaking his head. He turned away from Logan to face Erik, standing a step away from him. His hands were reaching out to Erik but they stayed unmoving in the air. “I deliberately tried to keep away from you, even though you’d said you wanted to keep me in your sight all night.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” was all he’d stoically managed to say before Xavier crashed into his chest, and every point of contact _hurt_ , the hand curled into his jacket, the face pressed into his shoulder, the arm circled around his waist.

Logan was looking on with the most wretched expression, his nostrils flaring as they emitted cigarette smoke. And yet, every time his eyes dipped to look at Xavier, they softened.

Erik could relate.

With an air of defeat, Logan took his jacket and swung it on. He loped over to where they were stood and paused to gently glide a finger down Xavier’s cheek.

“I hope you know that I won’t spare a single part’a your anatomy if anything happens to this kid.”

“For Christ’s sake Logan,” Xavier muttered into Erik’s jacket, heaving a long-suffering sigh.

“I mean it,” he added, retracting his hand to pluck his cigarette out of his mouth.

Erik, unwilling to even respond, simply brought his arm around Xavier’s shoulders and held him closer to his chest, closer to where the conflict was stirring inside him.

Xavier suddenly relaxed.

They left shortly after Logan did—Xavier kept to his place, tucked inside Erik’s arm, as they finally made their way down the winding stairs and past the grind of heaving bodies, out into the debilitating cold. Xavier huddled closer to him with a shiver, and they were both surprised and relieved when their car was awaiting them in the driveway. It was unlikely that the driver knew they’d be coming out now, so Erik suspected Logan to have called him out of their parking spot.

With the heating still running, it was pleasantly warm inside the car. Xavier got inside before he did, and the moment Erik was settled next to him, he’d re-materialised by his side, lifting Erik’s arm to insert himself inside it.

The last time they’d spent their car journey this close, flank to flank: Xavier was worn out from having to deal with his father’s death. This time it was his own.

Erik ever so slightly moved his head to the side. Xavier’s head was under his chin, and when he dipped it to press his nose to the boy’s hair, it smelt like citrus. Like usual. Erik took a deep breath, focusing on Xavier’s living, breathing presence.

He did this. He made this happen.

He could’ve let Xavier die—he wouldn’t have had to do a thing, what with Frost’s minion there to carry out the job.

But he saved Charles Xavier.

He saved Charles.

Erik twisted his wrist to let his fingers card through Charles’s hair. It was something his mother used to do, whenever he was upset, and—

His hand drew away. Charles let out a soft mewling noise.

“Do that again,” he murmured, leaning up towards Erik’s hand.

He hesitated.

Charles already associated Erik with his safekeeping, a guardian, a protective figure who always seemed to be there when he was needed.

Now, he was craving his contact. Urging for his nearness, his affection.

Erik had never thought he could be that person, and yet here he was.

He did this, too. He also made _this_ happen.

His hand reached out for Charles and combed back his hair, felt the softness of strands slip past the inside of his fingers. Rough, calloused fingers that had only known how to angle a gun and would tremble with anger and rage. Now they tangled in Charles’s wavy hair and wriggled through knots.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Erik said, placing his thumb on the boy’s temple.

“I won’t,” he replied.

When they rolled into the path leading to the Xavier estate, Charles had fallen asleep.

Erik wanted to be annoyed at the boy, but he was amused. He clicked his fingers in front of his closed eyes, repeatedly, but Charles had been lulled too deep.

The driver glanced at him from the mirror when they hadn’t immediately made their way out of the car, and Erik simply gestured towards the boy sleeping on his shoulder.

He was still half-hearted about waking Charles up, but he _had_ been meaning to get the boy to have a painkiller and his flu medication before he went to sleep.

“Mind if I try something?” asked the driver, turning to look at Erik over his shoulder.

“Sure,” he replied, after which the driver turned back around to his seat and slammed his hand down on the car horn.

Charles jolted upright, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. He looked around him, from window to window, eyes still half-shut.

“Have we reached?” he asked dazedly.

“Yes, we’ve reached,” Erik said, smiling. He opened the car door and in swept a vicious draught of cold wind, causing Charles to cower with chattering teeth.

They hurried towards the house, glad that the butler had heard them coming and opened the door for them. Perhaps the shrill sound of the horn had given away their arrival.

“Quickly!” the butler beckoned them in, shutting the door sharply behind them. “Freezing outside.”

Erik wearily looked around the spacious foyer. He glimpsed at the butler and considered telling him to bolt every door and lock every window in the house—but that could take _forever._ He’d have to help, but once Charles was asleep, unhearing.

“Mr Lehnsherr,” the butler called, guiding him to the lounge. He hadn’t even thought to expect Frost to be there, and he felt all kinds of gratitude when there was no sign of her—except the telephone receiver placed out of its cradle.

The butler was handing it to him.

“Ms Frost has been waiting to speak to you for a while.”

Erik swallowed. He nodded his thanks and clutched the receiver.

Charles snatched it away from his hand before he’d secured it in his grip.

“Let me talk to her,” he said, lifting a finger. Erik instinctually tried to retrieve it from the boy, as though _fearful_ of what Frost could say, but then—

“Auntie dearest!” Charles chirped, stepping backwards when Erik advanced for him. “You’re up rather late. I mean, how do you manage to get so much beauty sleep when you sleep this late.”

Erik felt like he was going to get a heart attack, still.

“You know, I have a bone to pick with you.” Charles hopped onto the table, all traces of sleep dispelled from his eyes. “Why is it that whenever you call, you only ever ask to speak to Erik?”

Charles sounded very unimpressed with whatever answer Frost had formulated.

“I understand.” He turned to look at Erik and widened his eyes as he shook his head.

Erik raised his brows. He started to take off his jacket, careful not to let his gun drop out of its pocket.

“Apology accepted. And I owe you a huge thank you, after all. For Erik, of course.” Charles timidly glanced over at him, then looked back down at his nails. “I gave you a hard time about not wanting a bodyguard and you kept persisting that I have one… and if you’d given up on, I would’ve been very, very sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

This was starting to get painful. Unbearably painful. Erik could only hope that it was a million times more painful to Frost’s ears. He turned away and went to listen from the hallway.

“Yes, he has. He’s been nothing but wonderful. I feel like… I feel like I trust him with my _life_.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I know… my father—well, we both know what my father was like, but knowing that this was his wish, and that you went out of your way to fulfil it… he would be very content to know what you’ve done for me.”

Erik supposed that Charles was right, most things considered, and that if he didn’t sound so earnest, he’d be coming off as patronising.

“So soon? But… didn’t you want to talk to Erik? Um, alright... Good ni—”

Charles went completely silent. A few moments followed before Erik could hear the receiver being put back down into place.

“Erik? Where are you?”

“Out here,” he called, leaning against the wall.

Charles came out of the lounge with a meek little smile.

“She had to go, something came up,” he informed, nodding. Erik nodded back.

“No problem. I’ll speak to her another time.”

Charles hadn’t even realised what a huge favour he’d done for them both.

They walked towards the kitchen, where Erik fetched Charles’s antibiotics and acquired some pain-relief medicine as well. He placed the collection of tablets in his palm and directed the boy to open his mouth—he was instantly, perhaps impulsively submissive, too _trusting_ —and allowed Erik to slot them all into his mouth. He looked betrayed when he felt one too many washing down his throat.

“I’m completely fine,” Charles claimed, frustrated, as he chugged down some more water and stood up to follow Erik out. He ran to catch up with him, gluing himself back to Erik’s side for every step of the staircase, to the moment they reached his room. “Would you come inside?”

Erik fixed Charles with a stare. “Charles, I’m right down the—”

“Please? Just while I’m getting changed in the bathroom. And then you can go.”

He succumbed to Charles’s tragically large, beseeching blue eyes. He followed Charles inside, and even though the boy hadn’t asked, he went inside the bathroom first, checking everything from the laundry hamper to the bathtub before letting him in. Charles went inside and shut the door, and the first thing he did was make sure Erik was still there on the other side.

“Talk to me,” he requested.

Erik rubbed his hands into his eyes, then went about taking his shoes off. “About what?”

“How was your day?” Charles asked.

“Eventful. How was yours?”

“Dramatic. I’m almost done. Just—” The tap turned on. “Bwuffing my teef.”

Erik took a moment to decode the boy’s words. “Be thorough.”

Only a few moments later, Charles emerged from the bathroom in his nightclothes. He offered Erik a sheepish smile.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No trouble,” Erik shrugged. “Will you be alright from here?”

Charles’s eyes leapt directly to the windows in the wall opposite. “Yes… I… I think so.”

Erik wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t say so. He walked over to each window and effusively checked that they were all shut before giving Charles a pat on the shoulder. He picked up his shoes from the floor and left.

He wasn’t the least bit surprised when he heard a knock on his door mere seconds after he’d entered his room.

“I’ll be with you in a second,” he shouted, inexplicably pleased. He messily tied the knots of his drawstring pyjamas before folding away his clothes.

“Alright,” he heard Charles say.

Erik smoothed his hair away from his face before opening the door. “Yes?”

Charles blinked at him as though he’d forgotten what he’d meant to say. “Sorry to disturb you. I just… I need you to do me a small favour.”

“Anything.” He shifted from one foot to the other.

“There’s a cockroach on the wall.”

“Why not let it be?”

Charles looked inspired for a moment, then bit his lip. “Please just come,” he said, taking Erik by the wrist and pulling him out of his room and down the corridor to his own.

There was no cockroach on the wall.

“It must have disappeared,” Charles said, inspecting the wall with a frown.

“Yes. Must have.” Erik folded his arms.

When he walked back out into corridor, Charles bolted after him.

“Where are you going?” he asked breathlessly.

“To get a blanket. I’ll sleep on the floor. You don’t have to say anything.”

Charles mumbled something small and indistinct. Erik wished he had turned around to see the boy’s expression.

He dropped his pillow down on the expanse of unobstructed carpet between Charles’s bedroom and the windowed wall, then his blanket. The boy himself was finally inside his own bed, but when Erik went over to turn off the light, he felt a hand clutch his wrist on the way back to the floor.

“Erik?” Charles whispered, and now he couldn’t see the boy’s expression even if he wanted to.

“Yes?” he whispered back.

“Come here.”

The boy tugged him down towards the bed, shifting to make space for Erik.

Erik sat down on the bed.

“I think… It’s just that I sleep really well when…”

Charles pressed his forehead against Erik’s shoulder. He pressed down, moved closer, and wrapped an arm around his waist, until Erik was lying down next to him. Charles was victorious.

Erik was doomed.

“Just for tonight, I promise.”

“It’s alright,” Erik insisted. “I don’t mind.”

“Thank you.” Charles shifted closer, sniffing. “I feel safe. Like this.”

Erik hated hearing that just as much he coveted it.

“I’m glad,” he murmured. “It’s my job,” he didn’t say, because that would be a blatant lie.

“I want to know something.”

“Hm?”

“What would you have done if something… did happen to me?”

Erik wanted to push the question as far away as possible, never to be heard again, because even hypothetically it made him want to crush something between his bare hands.

“I would have to surrender myself over to Logan’s wrath.”

Charles laughed silently into the pillow before returning to place his head on Erik’s shoulder.

“Logan would have you for dinner, without a doubt.”

“Oh I’m aware. I’ve taken his threat very seriously.” It was an awkward angle when they were laying down, but he still brought his hand around to run his fingers through Charles’s hair. “And I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He was frightened to know that he hadn’t meant that as a false promise.

Charles exhaled, all pepperminty across Erik’s neck, before snuggling closer to cover every inch of space between them.

“Thank you. Good night, Erik.”

“Hm. Good night.”

He couldn’t sleep.

He continued to play with the boy’s locks, but kept himself awake by ruminating over one tormenting question: would his parents also be content to know that Erik had made Charles’s life precious to him, or would they be dissatisfied to learn that his loyalties were no longer with the woman who had helped avenge their death?

It made him restless, because that had an answer he would never know.


	4. Chapter 4

Charles had somehow rolled away from Erik during the night. They were on opposite sides of the king-sized bed when Erik roused, with most of the blanket in the boy’s possession.

He still had some more drowsiness weighing his lids back down, and seeing Charles inert and calm in his sleep had Erik feeling relaxed enough to let himself do the same.

It was much, much lighter the next time he woke up in the room.

And he felt slightly cheated, because Charles was no longer asleep beside him.

Erik lifted himself up on slowly waking limbs and looked around. His eyes landed on the owl shaped wall clock in front of him. Somehow, he was reminded that he hadn’t slept with his gun tonight.

He climbed out of the boy’s bed and checked the bathroom, then went out into the corridor that stemmed between their rooms. The cleaning staff would’ve started their chores around the house, and Erik followed the sound of a vacuum cleaner until he could find someone and ask them if they knew where Charles was—apparently, he’d missed him by only a few minutes, as Charles had already gone downstairs to presumably have breakfast.

So there was really no reason to be worried.

Still, Erik felt his pulse rise at the thought of Charles being in a different corner of the house to him. He washed and dressed considerably fast before heading down to the kitchen. It was empty. Save for the staff, but that didn’t make it seem any fuller.

“Where’s Charles?” Erik asked, pouring himself a glass of water.

“He went down to the basement,” the butler informed him from where he was sat at the table.

“To the gym?” Erik frowned. The butler paused to think, then shrugged.

“Care for some tea Mr Lehnsherr?”

“No thank you. I’ll just go check up on Charles.”

Erik excused himself and headed for the stairs that led him down to the basement, where the gym was being occupied by the lively whirr of equipment in motion. His footfalls must have been louder, though, because his presence was immediately noticed.

“Erik? Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

He peered inside to find Charles almost hunched over and panting, doused in sweat, but still wearing a smile. He gave him a weak wave.

“Morning.”

Erik folded his arms. “I thought you swore to never set foot in here again.”

Charles licked his lips, tucking his hair behind his ear.

“I prefer to be at my own pace,” he explained, but Erik didn’t buy it.

“What’s wrong,” he panned.

Charles huffed, wiping his hand over his forehead. He rested his elbows on his knees.

“Yesterday… what happened. It made me feel like…”

Erik walked closer to Charles and offered his hand to pull him up.

“I felt so helpless. I should be _stronger._ I can’t always negotiate and talk my way out of danger,” he continued. Sighing, he took Erik’s hand and rose to his feet.

“Then what you need to be focusing on is self-defence.” Erik led the way forward, their hands slipping apart. He stopped short of the crash mat to take off his shoes and remove his gun from under his shirt. There was a punching bag suspended from the ceiling and boxing gloves and pads in a corner. He rolled up his sleeves. “I can teach you what I know.”

Charles squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Alright. I’d like that.”

Without a word of warning, Erik locked Charles’s wrists behind his back.

“What would you do if an attacker had you like this?”

The boy looked over his shoulder. “I’d ask them if they weren’t hugged enough as a child.”

Erik drew a long sigh.

\---

They were to expect a blizzard this evening, additionally to the layer of snowfall currently coating the driveway outside. Erik offered to help clear the snow from the car before blanketing it with a protective cover and returning to the house.

Charles was reading in the lounge, seated in front of the fireplace, but looked up the moment Erik entered. He looked anxious, and he was clutching something in his fist. Erik was about to sit down opposite him, but he was stopped by Charles’s voice.

“I have something to show you,” he said, unravelling from his seat. “Come with me.”

He followed the boy to the stairs that led to the basement, and once they reached the landing, he came to an abrupt halt.

“Erik this is extremely confidential,” he enunciated, stepping closer to him. “I’m trusting you with something very important to me.”

His instinct was to stop Charles altogether, to tell him not to put any more of himself in Erik’s blood stained hands, but when the boy trusted him this much—

“Are you certain this is something you want to share with me?” Erik clarified, pragmatic. “Maybe you need to think about this for a while.”

The boy balked at his suggestion, “I’ve been thinking about it all day.” Then he folded his arms, raising a brow in speculation. “Unless there’s a reason why I shouldn’t trust you.”

Erik raised his chin. “No. You can.”

Charles nodded, revealing what he had enclosed in his fist. It was a key, tied to a long chain—wearable, though Erik was confused by why Charles had stopped here at the stairs if he was about to open something. As though reading his expression, Charles turned to look at him.

“Do you notice anything weird about these stairs?”

Erik raked his eyes over them. Plain, wooden, ordinary, nothing substantial, but they had him wondering what he was missing.

“Nothing.” He shrugged.

Charles leaned forward and gripped the penultimate step by the fringe of its smooth upper surface—then he _lifted_ it. And as he did so, half of the staircase was also raised, and formed something of a ceiling to a passageway that had another set of stairs leading towards it.

“My father showed me this place when I was three, maybe four. Follow me,” he said, then ducked carefully as he climbed down the stairs that were under the stairs. Of course rich pretentious people would construct something like this in their homes.

It was a dank, cramped little room infested with dust and so untouched—perhaps even undiscovered—by the house staff. When Erik spotted the safe positioned on the ground, he realised he was in a vault.

Charles settled in front of the safe on his haunches and waited for Erik to do the same.

“A few days after my father died, the house was raided,” he stated. “Nothing was taken, but every corner of this house was thoroughly searched. They were clearly after something specific—they took down _million dollar paintings_ to look at the walls behind them, but didn’t take a single one with them when they left.”

“What they were looking for was in this safe,” Erik conjectured.

“Yes,” Charles nodded. “I was at school when it happened, and when I came home I investigated the damage. If they were after money, they could’ve taken a number of things. Instead they overturned my father’s office and completely abolished the lab downstairs. They didn’t get what they were looking for, and I had to find out what it was.”

“You thought of this place.”

“People tend to overlook stairs, more determined to pass them than anything else. I knew it had to be in here, whatever it was.” Charles inserted the key to the safe into its slot. “This key was also a clue—it was found around my father’s neck in post-mortem examination. I had no idea what it opened; I hadn’t come down here in so long.

“The tricky part, then, was predicting the combination,” Charles continued, fingers hovering over tiny number dials. “I knew it couldn’t be a birth date, no person was too special to him. I went up to his office, had a look through his notes, and found that he liked to number everything with roman numerals. Chapters on his thesis and journal articles, clocks and watches, general note-taking. And _that_ was how I gouged it.”

Charles spoke the numbers as he entered the combination, “Ten, five, one.”

“How did you know that?” Erik asked.

“The roman numerals in the name _XAVIER._ In neat decreasing order.”

The only light striking them was from the hallway above, rectangular beams peeking through the spaces between the stairs. Dust particles floated around them and Erik coughed as the safe creaked open.

There were stacks upon stacks of cash. Enough to fill up every square space of a safe that was roughly the length and width of his forearm.

He shouldn’t have been seeing this.

What was Charles thinking? There was enough in here for him to afford anything he pleased until his death bed, and for Frost, it might _just_ be enough to—

“I’m not sure how much is in here,” Charles said nonchalantly, dusting his hands. “Given the success of my father’s most recent project. But the _interesting_ thing is that I think might have found what those people were looking for and I think it’s this notebook full of—”

Erik hastened to hold his hands up and cut him off. “Charles - why are you showing me all this?”

Charles slowly shifted so that his left leg was under him and his right was folded under his chin. He reached for Erik’s hand, opened it to reveal his palm, and dropped the key inside it before forcing his fingers to close into a fist.

“This is your responsibility now.”

“ _What_?”

“If anything happens to me—”

“ _Nothing_ will happen to you,” Erik automatically pledged, before realising he’d interrupted Charles twice already. He sealed his lips.

“If nothing happens to me there’s nothing to be worried about, right? But the reality is that yesterday night somebody tried to murder me. And if they’d succeeded, someone would take advantage of that and tear this house apart for treasure and that is the last thing I want. If some burgling low-life found this money, I would not be able to rest in peace.”

Charles fitted his hand neatly over Erik’s, cupping it.

“I can only trust you to know about it.”

Erik looked down at their hands and felt a tremor in his fingers.

He was in too deep. He’d done more than his part to make Charles place his trust in him, and now he was so deeply ensconced in this boy’s matters and troubles that he’d become the one person Charles was readily revealing everything to.

The more their bond grew, the harder it was becoming to lie. The more Charles’s touch felt confident and comfortable.

“I will... do my best to make sure this money doesn’t go to the wrong people.” He exhaled shakily, and he was grateful that Charles didn’t seem to take note of his odd behaviour. “Should it ever have to come to that,” he added darkly. Nothing will happen to Charles.

He will do whatever it _takes_ to make sure nothing happens to Charles.

“I know,” Charles said softly, his face leaning forward to Erik’s for a brief moment before he lowered it to look at their hands. He patted Erik’s once before pulling away. “I know you will.”

He itched to address something else, “The notebook?”

“It’s worth more than his house,” Charles divulged. “It’s all of my father’s work.”

“What do you think he’d want you to do with it?” he asked cautiously.

“If I knew my father better…” Charles pinched the bridge of his nose in thought. “But with all the trouble it’s caused… he’d probably want me to destroy it.”

Charles wedged it out from underneath the piles of cash in the safe and flicked through it before closing it determinedly.

“In fact. I’ll do it now.”

\---

Erik could hardly stomach his dinner, just thinking about what he was about to do.

He could hardly look at Charles.

But this was going to be _for_ Charles’s sake, even if it would mean breaking his trust—it could save his damned _life_ and that was worth more than the frail promise he’d made in the vault.

He had to excuse himself and sidle past the door towards the lounge, where he picked up the telephone and dialled for the last caller.

“Emma Frost?”

Not for another few minutes.

“I’ll hold.”

His heart was a violently beating force down to his toes as he waited, hearing for any alerting sound beyond the door.

“Frost, it’s Lehnsherr.”

She sounded displeased simply by the sound of his voice. “Go on.”

“Emma did you know about the time—shortly after Brian Xavier’s death—when this mansion was raided?”

“What does this have to do with anything?—Yes, yes I do. It was Kurt Marko and his people.”

“Kurt Marko?”

“A colleague of Brian’s. He was a suspect for Brian’s murder, but his lawyer came to his infallible rescue. Word is Marko was shagging _Sharon_ Xavier behind Brian’s back. What’s with the question?”

Erik considered all of this. With Brian Xavier dead, his notebook untraceable, and his wife in rehabilitation, surely Marko would never set foot in the mansion again.

He hoped, for Charles’s sake.

“Today Charles destroyed what Kurt Marko was looking for. And when he did so, he showed me where that notebook was hidden.” He took a deep breath, said it: “It was hidden in a safe. In a very secret location. And there’s millions inside that safe, Emma. _Millions._ ”

Suddenly, he was talking to a completely changed woman.

“Sugar - don’t fuck with me.”

“Brian Xavier was a smart man. Surely you didn’t think he died without taking precautions.”  

“... Well, I always thought two hundred million was a fairly small amount to be leaving behind, for a man of his caliber. And stinginess.”

“The safe is bolted down to the floor, and I’ve revised the combination.” He reached inside his shirt for the chain hanging from his neck. “I have the key, too.”

“You have the key?” Frost deadpanned, sounding disbelieving. There was a little bit of satisfaction to be had there, but he couldn’t even revel in it.

“He gave it to me,” Erik replied.

“And why would he do that? What, is he in love with you? Does he think of you as some sort of father figure? Older brother? What’s going on between the two of you?”

Erik couldn’t even feign disgust for all of the possibilities Frost had covered, because not even he knew the answer to the first or the last question.

“Why does it matter to you? You want him dead, why should you care?”

“Don’t answer my questions with further questions.”

“You’ll get the Xavier money you hired me to get, and that’s all you need to know.” Erik could feel the phone slipping out of his clammy hand, and he switched to hold it with the other, smothering his hand against his slacks. “I can only transfer the money to you in the dead of the night, but you need to promise me you will never send anyone to hurt Charles again.”

“Sure, I’ll save you the trouble,” she lilted. “It’ll take me… hm, two days before I can come to New York. That’s more than enough time for you to get everything right.”

Erik had two days before he was going to betray Charles, and his lie would come to fruition.

“Yes,” he bit out, and let the phone slip from his hand as he ended the call.

The blizzard outside had started already.

\---

Erik had pilfered a few books from the library downstairs and kept them on his dresser, but he was yet to read a single one. He didn’t endeavour to start tonight, either.

He extracted his gun from inside his pillow case and ogled it. It was a basic revolver, more often used for target-shooting practise and self-defense, nothing too heinous, but he no longer wanted it in his hands. He tossed it inside the lowermost drawer of his bedside table and left his room.

Charles was waiting for him in his study, and this time the white pieces were on the boy’s side.

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come,” Charles said, sitting up to lean towards the board.

“Sorry, I had some things to sort out.”

Erik dove right into his counter move, then shook his head, retracting his piece to move it elsewhere. He massaged his forehead with a hand.

Charles observed him with concerned eyes. “It’s alright if you don’t want to play, I don’t mind.”

Erik looked up, waving a hand through the air dismissively. “No, I do want to. It’s fine.”

The boy curled back into his seat, tugging on the sleeves of his blue and gray striped pyjamas.

“Erik… I have to know something.”

He kept his eyes downcast, even as he felt his body tense.

“What?”

“I have to know—what I don’t understand is how, yesterday… how did you know I was in danger?”

This was unavoidable, really. If anything Erik had been expecting to be asked this sooner, considering Charles with his wondering eyes and constant need to know the answers to everything.

“I was scared,” he mused, thumbing the piece nearest to him. “You were in a stranger’s house, nobody with you, neither me nor Logan… and I was scared for you.”

Charles looked satisfied with his answer—or at least, the answer satisfied the part of him that wanted to hear about his bodyguard’s unerring ability to sense when he was needed.

All he wanted was for all of that to be real: how much more rewarding it could be, Charles’s hesitant little smile for him, if Erik’s word were true—if it hadn’t been a phone call, but his own instincts, that told him to be afraid for the boy.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Charles said, head tipped to the side, “But I still find it hard to believe that you don’t have a family of your own.”

Erik shrugged heavy shoulders. “It was my choice.”

“Really? You’ve never wanted to fall in love and settle down with somebody?”

It was the second time he’d heard that word today, and it still sounded completely alien to him.

“Falling in love isn’t my thing, if I can help it.”

Even with his eyes on the board, he could tell Charles looked affronted.

“You’re joking. Falling in love is—it’s the one thing that’s _everyone’s_ thing.”

Erik wanted to be swayed by Charles’s enthusiasm, but he couldn’t disagree more. While Erik looked at Charles with indifference, Charles looked at him with sympathy.

“What do you live for? What gets you up in the morning?” Charles asked, chin in his hands.

Leaning back, Erik said, “Well, this morning I got up because I had to find you and—”

He paused.

Charles’s questions might have been rhetorical, but his way of humouring the boy gave a tad bit more insight than Erik would’ve liked.

“Never mind,” he muttered. “Your move.”

Charles had already considered his move, and he executed it without thought.

“Sorry if I had you worried this morning,” Charles said, “You were asleep, so I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Feel free to disturb me any time, you shouldn’t hesitate.”

It was in his answering smile that Erik realised Charles _would_ find the love he so clearly hoped for, and he would find it in abundance—there was too much to love about him, and there was so much of him unloved, courtesy of his parents, that it could overwhelm a person into complete and utter infatuation.

But if anyone dared to hurt Charles’s love, Erik wouldn’t let that person rest easy for the rest of their life.

\---

Switching the lamp off, he yanked the covers up to his neck and had only managed to rest his head on the pillow for one blissful moment before he heard sounds.

Footsteps, creaking floorboards, his door yawning open, and then,

“Erik? Are you asleep?”

The boy darted to his bed and Erik moaned in protest when Charles got inside with him, because all he was going to do was hog the blanket, even if he did smell nice and make Erik feel more at ease with his near presence.

“ _Charles_ ,” Erik complained, hitching the blankets up as the boy scooted towards him, and somehow the motion of tugging upwards sent his elbow knocking into Charles’s face.

They both gasped, Charles in pain and Erik in shock.

“Charles - I am _so_ sorry!”

Erik turned towards the boy and pried his hands away from his face. One of the boy’s eyes were closed, the other squinting. He pointed towards the closed one with a pout.

“Shit,” Erik cursed, moving one arm towards the bedside lamp and flicking it on. “Is it bad? Can you open it?”

Charles winced as he tried, his eyelashes watery.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“No, I - shouldn’t have just…” the boy hushed when Erik leaned forward and blew softly onto his eye. He placed his arms either sides of Charles’s head, bracketing his face, and let the gusts of his breath slowly soothe the pain in the boy’s eye. It was something he clearly remembered his mother doing, along with the hair petting, that Erik had always believed worked charmingly.

“Any better?” he asked.

Charles continued to look up at him as he blinked in test, and then nodded his head.

“It’s fine.” He was about to move his hand to touch his eye, but Erik quickly caught it.

Perhaps it had never crossed his mind before, but positioned over Charles like this, staring down at his eyes—he was only now seeing how unnaturally blue they were, how the sharpness of his eyebrows made them so much more striking.

Someone was going to fall in love with him so _hard_ and those eyes would be their downfall.

Erik was just glad he hadn’t inflicted permanent damage on either of them.

He released Charles’s hand, then hoisted himself up onto his knees to reach for the lamp switch.

“I can go if you’d like,” Charles suggested, but Erik ignored it completely—he might have reconsidered if his gun was still under the pillow, but it was stowed away safely, and Charles he could keep protected from here, with his arm draped across his stomach.

Charles let out a happy sigh before turning onto his side. “Good night,” he said, adjusting Erik’s arm across his flank.

“Night,” Erik mumbled back, dragging himself closer to Charles so he could bury his other hand in his hair and curl his hand around the boy’s waist.

At least, this way, Charles couldn’t steal the blanket from him.

\---

Erik’s eyes snapped open from a bad dream.

He knew the blurred images flashing before his eyes pieced together to form that nightmare, but he was too spooked to let himself remember—even if it would’ve held an apt explanation for why he felt so much staggering relief to see Charles breathing next to him.

Erik was being crushed under the boy’s weight to one side of the bed, but the first thing he did was reach for Charles’s wrist and wrap his fingers around it. His pulse was a steady patter against his fingertips and Erik could hardly fathom how much he cared to feel it.

It was strange, because mere months ago _caring_ for people wasn’t much of his thing either.

“E _rik_ ,” came a whine from beside him, followed by Charles’s wrist wriggling free from Erik’s hold.

“Wake up, Charles.” It was almost breakfast time. “Your butler will be coming up to your room if you’re not down soon.”

“Hm.” Charles rubbed his eyes and picked himself off of his stomach to sit on his knees. “If he finds me in here, we’ll be toast.”

“Precisely.”

Charles nodded and slipped off the bed before landing on the carpet. “See you at breakfast,” he said as he walked out, feet dragging with each step.

By the time they did see each other, Erik had showered and dressed himself, and was seating himself at the table—that was when the butler handed him a parcel from Frost.

He didn’t open it until after the meal, when he was alone in his room. He tore off the packaging and was somewhat annoyed to see that Frost had sent him another cell phone.

The key was still with him.

He was going to save Charles’s life, but he still felt _dreadful._

He switched the phone on and left it in the same drawer as the gun before he left his room to find Charles dashing towards him from the other end of the corridor.

“Erik have you looked outside? There is _so much_ snow,” he enthused, practically bouncing on his feet.

Just three minutes later, Erik was enveloped in two coats, had on a pair of gloves and yellow wellington boots, and was being led outside into the front yard with a similarly dressed Charles.

Everything between the furthest lamppost to the closest blades of grass were seamlessly cloaked in a thick jacket of snow, and even though it was cold enough that Erik felt as though his skin was peeling off, there was indubitable satisfaction in letting his feet sink into the untouched snow.

Charles, however, simply launched himself into expanse of snow with a huge grin, and Erik couldn’t help feeling concerned every time his hat pulled away from his ears.

“Stop looking so miserable,” Charles yelled at him, scooping up a handful of snow and aiming it at Erik’s leg.

He wasn’t having that.

He retaliated with bigger ammunition, which Charles just fell short of dodging by a few inches. He rolled to the side having been pelted by Erik’s shot, and because it was annoying him more than he’d thought, Erik dashed over to him to pull his hat over his ears. Charles cowered, though, having misconstrued what Erik had come over to do—he let out a nervous peal of laughter, his face scrunched up tight, until Erik pulled away.

“Isn’t it nice out here?” Charles commented with a sigh, trying to be all dreamy-eyed in distraction, as he constructed yet another snowball to lob Erik with. Humming in agreement, Erik feigned obliviousness, then capably ducked to avoid Charles’s attack.

The boy had no time to procure the snow around him because now Erik had leapt forward for him and had him on his back, hands above him.

“Trying to be smart?” Erik teased, looming over Charles challengingly. He pinned the boy’s hands down, restraining him in a way that would present him with difficulty in getting up. “If I was your attacker, and I had you like this, what would you?”

Erik was expecting Charles to have him on his back by the next minute, flinging his leg over Erik’s hip and bearing down until he’d successfully managed to transfer his weight atop Erik’s and flipped them over—but what he _hadn’t_ anticipated was for Charles to shovel a copious amount of snow down Erik’s coat before setting off in a brisk waddle back towards the house. He hissed and shivered as he dusted himself off, clumps of ice sliding down the back of his jumper, but even Erik’s determination to get Charles back had to be impeded when the front door opened to reveal the butler.

They weren’t to re-enter until their boots were shimmied off and their coats had been shaken out for snow and given back to the butler for drying. Erik’s jumper was now damp, though, and he was instructed to take it off and put on something else lest he caught a cold. He stripped it off in the foyer before adding it to the pile of coats, and felt Charles behind him pulling down the t-shirt he was wearing underneath from where it had risen up. He turned around to look at the boy, who simply smiled and walked backwards in the direction of the lounge.

Erik made a quick trip upstairs to put on another warm layer—and felt the strange need to fix his hair when he caught himself in the mirror, then stopped, and simply stared at himself.

What’s _happened_ to him?

How did he learn to _care_? To spend a whole month stalling on his duty, just so he could keep that boy alive—alright, so that was something he was glad he did, but, now, he was entertaining this comfortable camaraderie with the boy, playing in the _snow_ with him, as though it was all consolation for what he was going to do.

What he was doing was showing Charles exactly how much he cared and in return, hoping that Charles would understand that it was his care for him that forced him to do what he was going to.

Swallowing, he turned around and lifted his shirt and looked at his reflection to see what Charles saw when his skin was bared. Thankfully, the bulk of his scars and healing injuries were on his upper back, so the boy had seen nothing that could’ve disconcerted him. He tugged his clothes back down and left his room to go downstairs.

The fireplace was alight in the lounge, casting a flickering shadow across the carpet and engulfing Charles where he was sat, hands spread to absorb its warmth.

When it all would end, between them, he was not going to let this boy think he never cared.

Erik went to sit opposite the boy and caught him smiling to himself. He didn’t question, just distracted himself with Charles’s furry blue socks - but it was even more amusing to try and tug them off, as they were so tight around Charles’s ankles that he was dragging the boy towards him with each tug. Charles laughed like a lunatic when one flung off to leave Erik’s hand—which almost smacked him square in the face—and landed on top of the lampshade.

Somehow, they were so close together in each other’s space, Charles’s foot near Erik’s lap while the boy held onto his shoulder to keep upright, that they were startled apart by the butler’s entrance.

He didn’t notice the furry sock hanging on the roof of the lampshade as he set down a tray of two mugs, both steaming and topped off with cream.

“Hot chocolate for master Xavier and his bodyguard,” he said primly, drawing the coffee table closer to where they were sitting. Charles was too distracted to correct his butler, simply tucking his foot underneath himself.

“Thank you darling,” Charles replied with a dazzling smile still full of mirth. He shared a contemplative look with Erik. “Wouldn’t it be nice to play chess down here for a change?”

Erik pursed his lips. It was so warm and cosy and anything Charles said sounded wonderful, as long as he was alive and breathing and speaking. “Mmhmm,” he sounded absently. After a beat, he moved to get up. “I’ll go get it.”

He was stopped by the butler.

“Allow me,” the man said with a bow, and then strolled out of the lounge. Erik was slightly dumbstruck for a moment, because this was supposed to be _normal_. He still got up to his feet and went to collect Charles’s sock, then sat back down and offered it to him. Charles presented him with his foot and Erik, with a scoff, slipped the sock back up to his ankle. Erik didn’t even realise what he’d done and the fact that he’d _done_ it didn’t occur to him until Charles was blushing and bringing his knees up to his face. He was also making room for the butler, who had returned to step in between them and place the chessboard down in the centre of the carpet.

They played until late in the afternoon. Erik remembered winning twice, teasing Charles for having a cream moustache, and resuming his war with Charles’s fuzzy blue sock when the boy had finally started to win, ending Erik’s victorious streak.

Charles then had the idea to go to the “television room”, which turned out to be one of the many realms of the house that Erik had passed by without exploring. Inside was a long red loveseat with cup holders installed, facing a large cabinet that, upon pressing the button on a remote, opened to reveal a monumental television screen. The lights dimmed, the speakers surrounding them let out a waking groan, and the popcorn machine behind them rumbled to life.

Erik’s knowledge of movies was sparse, so Charles got to choose what they watched. It was an old black and white movie with lots of running and singing and synchronized dancing, but Erik’s favourite parts were the ones that made Charles laugh and drop his head onto his shoulder. Hold onto his arm as he chuckled, use Erik’s jumper to muffle a giggle.

He had no idea non-sexual physical contact could affect him so much, but here he was—relishing every comic moment in the film for an entirely different reason.

The next film was a slow-paced, dreary drag that they were halfway into before being fetched for dinner. He was glad, because there was something strange and almost discomfiting about watching a passionate kissing scene between two sad people while Charles was leaning on him. It made him feel suddenly self-aware, stuck between wanting to cover the boy’s eyes and see his reaction, and so it was much, much easier to not be watching the film any more.

At dinner Charles was lively, all snappy remarks and doling out compliments. His bubbly aura was so much more fulfilling than the food on his plate, and it was during spoonfuls of pudding that Erik realised he was starting to appreciate Charles’s existence, and he was going to miss him to an immense extent.

Saying goodbye was going to be hellish - but that depended on whether he was even going to get a chance.

\---

He checked his phone after dinner. He had one text message from Emma Frost that read, _Tuesday morning 3am. Everything in that safe._

Erik sent back a curt reply, _Understood._

That was going to be the end of their conversation, but his phone received another message almost instantly.

_If you’re fucking with me I will put you back in jail._

Honestly, Erik didn’t know what to make of that threat. He imagined for a second that he didn’t somehow succeed, angered her enough that she did exactly what her warning entailed, and he was sent back to prison—he imagined it, being back in exactly the same cell, being given exactly the same food, being faced with exactly the same residents.

But it wouldn’t be the same, because now he knew and cared about Charles. Now, if he was to be separated from Charles he would spend every moment in agony.

If he was sent back to prison, he would be vigilantly counting his days and forging escape plans left right and center.

He would _definitely_ give a shit, because he cared so goddamn much about one Charles Xavier and if _anything_ happened to him—

“Erik!”

He turned around. Charles was standing at his door, dressed for bed in his striped pyjamas and still in those furry socks Erik quite liked.

“Aren’t we going to finish our movie?” he asked, arms swinging by his sides. “Or are you busy?”

Erik dumped his phone back into the drawer and shut it closed with his foot. “Come here,” he demanded quietly.

Charles actually pointed at himself, then turned around, in jest, to see if anyone was standing behind him before making his way around the room to where Erik was sat.

“I’m,” he began, looking up at the boy. “I… I’m really… I care a lot about you, Charles.”

Dropping his shoulders, Charles said, “Are you saying nice things because you don’t want to watch the rest of the movie? You can just say it, you know. There is a fair bit of crying every other scene, but.” He sat down next to Erik on his bed. “I’m very aware of the fact that you care about me.”

Erik nodded.

What if he told the boy everything, now?

It was thoroughly tempting, but laying out the truth at this point would mean he would be losing Charles before he had mentally prepared himself for it, and Charles was becoming so _dear._

Erik nodded again, then brought his arm around the boy’s shoulders until he leaned towards him, close enough that he could drop a kiss on Charles’s head.

He’d never wanted to get this comfortably intimate with Charles, but how could he refrain himself when there was no resistance, just encouragement, just the pleasing feel of Charles’s body winding around Erik’s like they were always meant to feel this _good_ and _right_ together.

The boy’s arms wrapped around Erik’s neck, loose enough that when he reached for Charles’s wrist, it easily came free. He held onto it, and breathed.

Charles knew Erik cared about him: that was what he said. Would he still think so when the truth came out?

“Erik, you’re frowning,” Charles pointed out, resting his chin on Erik’s shoulder.

Relaxing his expression, he turned to look at the boy.

“Let’s go finish the movie.”

They watched the whole damn movie that night. Erik mostly kept his nose in Charles’s hair while they shared sweet, toffee-glazed popcorn and he almost nodded off if it wasn’t for the blaring sound system in his ears.

But Charles looked elated, even though it was his apparent seventh viewing of that particular film, and Erik was just glad today was ending on a good note for him, at the very least.

Perhaps Charles was going to sleep on his own tonight. He still had no idea, not until they were in the corridor and Charles stopped him from walking towards his own room by wrapping his arms around Erik from behind and pulling him back until they were at his doorstep.

“Charles,” Erik said, “you have a mouth, you can ask.”

“What, ask you to sleep with me?” he said, shutting the door to his bedroom. He flushed a little. “It’s awkward.”

Erik supposed the phrasing was a tad suggestive, so he let it pass.

They climbed into Charles’s bed, the owl clock watching them, and negotiated with the blanket custody. It would devolve into a full blown war by the night, and Charles would most likely wake up with no socks on—if that’s what it would take.

Erik had thought that he would be asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, but now he was staring at the back of Charles’s head in the dark, unmoving. He just wanted Charles awake and talking to him again, because even with the entire day together, he missed him.

And then Charles turned around and gave him a questioning look.

“What? Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Can’t sleep,” he whispered back.

“Oh, you looked very much asleep during the movie five minutes ago.”

“I was absolutely awake for the whole movie.”

“Oh really? Name one thing that happened.”

“People cried.”

Charles rolled his eyes, and even that was somehow visible when it was mostly dark. His eyes glittered so much.

He noticed Erik’s unwavering gaze on him and tucked his hands under his cheek.

“Is this a staring contest?” he asked.

“If this is a contest, I _will_ win,” Erik denounced.

“Okay.” Charles rubbed his eyes, readying them. “Ready, set, go.”

They looked endlessly. Erik knew he could look at the boy’s eyes—and nowhere else—for an eternity, he knew he could do that, but he hadn’t anticipated Charles to be equally good at it. Not a flinch or a flicker of the eyes for a whole minute between them, and it was starting to get achingly difficult when Charles’s gaze flitted ever so subtly to his lips, and Erik’s eyes _had_ to refresh themselves with a blink.

“Aha! I win,” Charles cheered, looking smug. Erik hated giving him that satisfaction, but it was infectious all the same. He ruffled Charles’s hair and cupped his head close to his own shoulder, where he tended to end up leaning on Erik to sleep. Charles rested his hand on Erik’s chest as he readjusted his position, then kept it there—and it wasn’t until the boy had fallen asleep that Erik placed his own hand upon it.

\---

Late, late into the night, Erik was awake and Charles was asleep.

Erik cupped Charles’s shoulder and pushed him back, gently, to lay on the other side of the bed. Charles was almost fluid, the way he poured onto his back, and Erik was both relieved and disappointed that Charles could be moved without waking up, but the moment he experimentally moved to leave the bed—

Charles was rolling back towards him, reaching for his shirt, and pressing his head to Erik’s chest. Pinning him back down.

How would he be able to do this the same time tomorrow?


	5. Chapter 5

It was a difficult morning to wake up to. The curtains had been drawn, and so light flooded in and weighed heavily on his eyelids, making him both dissatisfied by the hour he was waking up, and annoyed that a certain _somebody_ felt compelled to open the curtains.

That certain somebody must’ve been awake.

That certain somebody was probably the weight on his stomach, the eyes he could feel on him.

“Charles,” Erik said, first thing in the morning. He cracked an eye open and saw the boy had an arm over his torso and propped his chin over it. There was a book on him, too, like he had doubled as a reading table overnight. The book was one of the few he’d taken from the library but never got around to reading.

“Good morning, Erik,” Charles murmured, turning a page.

“Morning,” Erik yawned, rubbing his eyes.

It was Monday, according to the calendar on the wall. Which meant tonight.

Tonight he was going to really and truly betray someone he cared about.

He was going to save his _life._

Charles glanced at him searchingly before looking down at the book with a sigh. He folded the top corner of the page he was on and shut it. He sat up on his own weight, finally allowing Erik to sit up against the headboard.

“May I ask you something?”

Erik hadn’t anticipated the questions to start so early in the day, but—it was Charles, after all.

“Go ahead,” he decided.

Charles scooted forward on his knees, then lowered himself back down onto his stomach. He turned his head to look at Erik, doleful.

“Are you going to leave when I turn eighteen?”

Erik sat up straighter with a frown. He cleared his throat, looking down at his hands.

“Your father’s will only states—”

“I know, I know,” Charles huffed, shutting his eyes. “I was just wondering, if… if you’re going to be assigned as someone else’s bodyguard in a month’s time.”

Erik tried to delve into Charles’s perception of him for one strange moment, and imagined that he really was who he said he was—this reverential bodyguard who offered his protection to the people who needed it, Charles being just one of those “assignments”, and the next one will be no more different or more special than the one before—and it was slightly surreal to think that he was being this person.

“I—I’m not sure yet,” he blundered, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t know.” He turned to look at Charles, who was studying him so carefully that it was hard not to blanch.

“Is it some confidentially thing?” Charles asked abashedly.

Erik shifted. “Maybe.”

Charles ducked his head to study the carvings in the headboard. “So there _is_ someone else,” he muttered lowly. Erik almost didn’t catch his words, so he pretended like he hadn’t, but—how could he ignore the subtle rasp of spite in his voice?

“I thought I was _completely unnecessary_ and that you’d be glad to finally get rid of me,” Erik said lightly, moving onto his stomach so he was mirroring Charles. Their shoulders brushed.

“You _know_ that’s not how I feel about you,” Charles replied, sounding faintly annoyed. He scraped his nails roughly against the wood in front of him. “I actually happen to like having you around, and it will be a pity when you go. It will be a pity to think of someone else spending time with you the way we did.”

Erik couldn’t utter a word. He just stared, stared at the top of Charles’s head as he continued to viciously scratch at the splinters of wood coming free under the assault of his nail, and tried to understand what was happening inside him. Why his heartbeat had travelled to his ears as though it was desperate to be heard; the way pain drew attention, his _heart_ was an erratic, unavoidable drum and he couldn’t find a way to calm it down.

“Charles,” Erik breathed, his tone suggesting he had more to say, when he quite frankly didn’t, and now he was an open-mouthed fool gaping at his hands.

“I don’t want you to feel bad, I know it’s just your job, but—maybe I’m just naive to think that you liked it here too, with me…” Charles let out a sound that resembled a self-deprecating laugh, and he shook his head, slumping down. “Forget it. Ignore me. It’s just a difficult time of year.”

With that, Charles propped himself onto his arms and slipped off the bed, and Erik couldn’t find the words that would stop him as he walked away and shut the door behind him.

\---

It wasn’t until breakfast that Erik realised what day it was.

Today was Christmas.

And while people tended to observe the occasion with all kinds of flamboyant festivities, Erik saw nothing of the kind in this household. The same breakfast was served, no decorations were to be seen, and not even a word was spoken over the table to perhaps suggest the importance of the day to most.

Erik was on his way out of the kitchen after finishing his painfully quiet meal with Charles when he saw a flash of red, green and golden. The butler had placed a neatly wrapped box in front of Charles and was encouraging him to open it.

The boy’s spoon dropped to the ledge of his bowl. He glanced at the butler once more before carefully undoing the bow that was wound meticulously around the box and peeling off the wrapping paper. The box that revealed itself in Charles’s hands was glittered with the words _Merry Christmas!_ and caused a soft smile to lift the corner of Charles’s lips. He removed the lid and set it aside as he reached into the box for the very obvious sweater folded neatly inside it. He shrugged it out with a grin of approval and pulled it against his front, showcasing how the warm green sweater looked if it was on him.

“I absolutely love it,” Charles exclaimed, looking floored, but it devastated Erik to see how well he was masking his sadness for the sake of the house staff looking on.

The butler accepted the boy’s thankful gestures and neither of them noticed, or at least, didn’t react, when Erik let himself out.

\---

Nothing could steal his attention for too long. He was back to thinking—no, _obsessing_ over Charles again, recalling his shadowy gaze and earnest confession over and over until every detail was wrenching more and more guilt out of him.

At the same time, he didn’t know how to make sense of the morning conversation. What could he have said that would’ve made Charles’s smile? Be content? He should’ve cared more about keeping Charles happy than upholding a ruse that was going to crumble any moment too soon.

But then, there was tonight.

Tonight, the house staff were leaving early to visit families and friends, and Charles had insisted that they could stay as long as they liked, what with enough food prepared in the fridge for both of them to be sated for the rest of the week. Disregarding the boy’s plea, the butler announced he would be back by Wednesday, as would a number of others, and that would be entirely convenient for what Erik had to do tonight. It also meant Charles and Erik would be alone for the rest of the day and tomorrow.

He went to the gym, naturally, and revisited his body’s capacity for physical exertion until it was no longer feasible to even stand up. A long shower was due straight after, and by the time he came out of the bathroom, the entire house had been thrown into complete darkness already. None of the house staff were there to make sure the lights were on, and Erik didn’t feel the need to bother either. He stalked down to the corridor to see if Charles was in his room. But—no sounds, no light, no response.

Study, then.

The boy’s study was in the opposite side of the first floor, and once he’d reached the door, he’d managed to work himself into a state of frenzied nerves, just thinking about how he was going to say what he planned to.

He let himself inside and didn’t catch any sight of Charles in the softly lit room until he saw a figure on the floor move. Glass knocked into wood, and from behind the stool, a head of brown hair emerged.

“Charles,” Erik regarded him, walking around the sofa to see where Charles was sitting in a ball on the floor.

There was a bottle there, and the boy’s hands were clutching its neck more desperately as Erik came nearer.

Charles’s head was resting on his knees, his back against the sofa. He looked up at Erik with red-rimmed eyes that told Erik everything he needed to if he was to ask the boy whether or not he was alright.

Instead, Erik sat down opposite Charles, his back against the chair that he usually sat in to play chess in.

This time, Charles wasn’t having champagne. He was drinking brandy. A light variant, as much as Erik could see, but it perturbed him just to know that Charles had wanted to intoxicate himself in the first place.

When Charles met his eyes, he offered him the bottle.

Erik shook his head, waiting. Waiting for Charles to realise what he had _actually_ come here for.

The boy’s face drew up tight, like he was about to let out a sob, but then he was crawling towards him on his hands and knees and throwing himself into Erik’s embrace. He wrapped his arms around Charles and swore it was the sweetest feeling, the boy’s face buried in Erik’s neck.

He ran his hand down Charles’s back and elicited a slight shiver, then stopped. Charles leaned away slowly, still circled in Erik’s arms as he wiped his face clean of silent tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but Erik was quick to shake his head. He tucked Charles’s hair away from his face and let the boy settle comfortably in front of him.

Just when Erik had thought they’d made progress, Charles reached behind him to grab for the bottle again, and took a long, enduring swallow from it. When he removed the bottle from his lips and swallowed audibly, he pressed his forehead into Erik’s neck with a sigh.

“It’s okay if you think I’m a disgrace,” he murmured, his skin hot against Erik’s.

“I don’t,” Erik said immediately.

“My mother always thought she was a disgrace,” Charles said, taking another sip. “Nobody was there to tell her she wasn’t.”

Erik waited to see where he was going with this. He sat extremely still while Charles fidgeted with the collar of his shirt.

“Maybe she believed it. Maybe _that’s_ why she brought him to her room.” Charles suddenly covered his face and let out a weak cry as he said, “I saw her _do_ it. I saw her bring that man into her room. She cheated on my father with his own _friend_ and I did nothing about it. I could’ve— _stopped_ it, done something, but I was too much of a bloody coward.”

Erik removed Charles’s hand from his face and tried to initiate eye contact between them as he spoke. “It wasn’t your fault, Charles.”

“But when I _knew_ … I could’ve warned my father, he invited that _horrid_ man for Christmas dinner every single damn year and _every_ time he would excuse himself and leave because he had something to check in the lab, some urgent paperwork to handle, never mind that he hardly had time for me, my _mother_ couldn’t stand it either. Of course she was going to—he, he was a terrible friend of my father’s, why didn’t I—should’ve _warned_ him—”

“Charles, stop doing this to yourself,” Erik had to yell sharply at the boy, shake him by the shoulders just so he could see sense. “You can’t torture yourself like this, so _please_. Don’t.”

Charles looked at him as though he was only now seeing him for the very first time. More surprising was the way he didn’t argue, just slumped against Erik’s chest in defeat. He even set the bottle down, a fair distance away from him, and heaved in a long, shaky breath.

“There was this girl, you know. I was around twelve, she was younger. I was passing by the kitchen when I heard noises, and everyone had gone by then, so I was convinced we were being burgled.” Charles shifted so he was sitting up next to Erik’s legs. He swallowed painfully before continuing. “Turned out it was a little girl. She was starving. She hadn’t eaten in days, couldn’t find her family. I let her empty the pantry,” Charles said with an airy laugh. “I even gave her some of my old clothes. I wanted her to stay forever and be my little sister. I hid her in my room for as long as I could, kept telling her I would convince my parents to adopt her. But I couldn’t. They didn’t listen. I wish I could change their _mind_ , but I had to let go of her and…” Charles came barrelling into Erik’s chest again, with more grief, with fresh tears, and Erik had failed once again. All he could do was hold the boy with the gentleness he was only now discovering he was capable of.

It was _difficult_ , because here was someone he cared about, and right here was their pain, and Erik could do nothing. Nothing but watch his hand roam up and down the boy’s back and hope it brought him some relief.

“I really am a disgrace,” Charles sniffled, moving to sit back. Erik wanted to hold him again, tell him was completely wrong, tell him that he was perfect.

But all he’d managed to get out was, “You’re not, Charles.”

“And I wonder _why_ people want me dead. Why wouldn’t they?! When I’m such a _worthless_ human being who—”

“Shut _up_!”

Erik hadn’t realised he’d shouted until he saw the way Charles had jolted backwards and fallen onto his elbows, and saw the way his own body was crowding over the boy’s.

But—he was _angry._ And that was a distinct feeling he had no problem identifying.

“You are _not_ worthless and you _do not_ deserve to die. Do you understand me? Do you?!”

Charles stared at him, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, panting on the carpet with only his elbows propping him up.

“I swear to _Gott_ Charles don’t you _ever_ dare talk about dying. Scheiße, Charles. _Scheiße._ ”

It wasn’t even a wonder to him—why he was reacting this way. Charles couldn’t just offhandedly say something like that when Erik was going to do tonight what he was about to, all for this boy to stay alive. Here he was desperate to keep his company and warmth and presence and his citrus-smelling hair, his sleepy clinginess, his sweet little smiles.

And Charles could _not_ just say something like that.

Charles was blinking up at him with unshed tears and bewilderment in his eyes. When he shakily inhaled, he stole Erik’s own breath, dragged it out of his lungs and pressed his lips together to seal its capture.

Erik saw every moment that happened after that, because he couldn’t look away.

Because it happened so slowly.

So very slowly.

When Charles’s eyes fell to his lips, Erik knew what was going to happen.

He didn’t stop it from happening.

He let Charles’s face move closer to his, and he let his eyes shut, and he let himself feel the pressure of a brief, hesitant kiss. His lips had never felt as delicate as they did against Charles’s, neither had he felt lips as tender as Charles’s, and how was this even happening?

He was shouting at Charles a moment ago, and now—

_It’s okay, because you care about me._

_That’s why you were angry at me, that’s how you express it._

Erik wasn’t breathing, just feeling, and now one had left no room for the other. He breathed in harshly through his nose, his face inadvertently moving backwards and bringing Charles’s forward with him. The movement had the boy letting out a sad little whimper, and suddenly his lips were gone.

He’d never felt so bereft.

He didn’t want to open his eyes. No, he couldn’t.

He shook his head and dropped his face into his hands.

“Erik?”

Charles’s voice was a ragged whisper above him, and Erik hated how the boy’s voice reminded him of his mouth, of his lips, so close and warm against his own. What if it never stopped reminding him? What if every time he opened his eyes and looked at Charles’s lips he would be reminded of where his own lips had been on them?

He’d never hated himself more than he did right now.

“What have I done?” he whispered to himself, trying to erase the memory of the last few seconds.

“Erik—did you not—I’m so _sorry_ …”

Did he not? Did he _not_ want to kiss Charles?

It was simple. For once, it was fucking simple. If he didn’t want to kiss Charles, he wouldn’t have kissed Charles.

He couldn’t _possibly_ ever hate himself more.

He needed to leave.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he rolled back onto his knees and supported himself with the chair in order to stand up, as though he was the drunk one.

But he wasn’t the drunk one.

He wanted to go into his room and _kick_ something. Yes, that was exactly what he was going to do.

That meant _ignoring_ Charles as he made one more attempt at calling his name, and keeping his eyes closed until he had swivelled around and found the way to the door.

But Charles had been sitting closer to the exit, and he managed to stir to his feet and walk around the chair in time to block Erik’s path.

Erik immediately snapped his gaze away to look down at his feet.

“Can we at least talk?” Charles asked quietly.

He had been Charles’s first kiss with a man.

But he wasn’t just _a man_ , was he?

He was a criminal.

He was supposed to be in jail.

“There’s nothing to discuss. That shouldn’t have happened,” Erik said grimly, rubbing his hand over his face. “I’m sorry,” he added.

“I just need to know,” Charles said, stepping to the side so he was allowing Erik space to leave, “for my sanity. If you actually wanted to kiss me or if I imposed myself on you.”

Erik’s jaw went taut. Charles and his goddamn needto _know._

Charles and his goddamn everything that had now put Erik in this position: where he could leave, but he was unmoving.

“Please? Tell me, Erik. Did you actually want to kiss me?”

“Goddamit Charles,” he spatted. “That’s precisely the _problem_.”

He stalked out of the study and welcomed the dark of the corridor that fell on him from every angle, putting as much distance between himself and the boy as was possible with every step he advanced.

When he reached his room, he thought he was going to tear something into two, snap something into halves.

Instead he sat against the door and pressed the palm of his hand to his mouth. His nails dug into his cheek and his fingers clenched tightly at his skin.

He let his head fall back against the wood of the door.

The last time he’d been kissed—he couldn’t even _remember_. There weren’t many men who deigned to kiss him while in prison, not even while they were fucking. Kissing had never held any appeal to him, and by no means had it ever been an urge, but now he was transfixed with the five seconds that their lips had touched like he was a fiend. He wished he’d cupped Charles’s round face, he wished he’d actually moved his lips, he wished he could’ve lengthened the kiss.

He wished he hadn’t let it happen at all.

He couldn’t help wonder what Charles was thinking.

No—that was exactly what he wouldn’t do. He wasn’t going to think about Charles.

In the larger scheme of things, what was Charles? Just some lonely rich boy with a gigantic fucking estate who Erik was going to rob of some cash, and then abandon.

He didn’t even have to imagine what his parents would think of that.

But he _had_ to. He had to stop thinking and start doing.

He had to find a way to transfer all of that money in the safe downstairs to Frost.

\---

Charles didn’t come to his room that night. It was a blessing in disguise, really, but under other circumstances, Erik might have mourned that loss.

His phone had an alarm setting and he adjusted it so a light vibration would go off at a quarter past two. It was superfluous, in the end, because he was already awake to shut his phone from making any noise.

Perhaps he’d be able to sleep once he’d done this.

He slipped out of bed and placed his phone in the pocket of his trousers. He wondered if he should keep the gun or return it to Frost, but decided he was better off keeping it.

The house was completely silent, but he still remained wary. The key was around his neck and he was hyper-aware of every way it knocked into his chest with his movements. The darkness was stilting, and he depended on all other senses to be sharp.

Because if Charles caught him—

He wasn’t going to go there. Less thinking, more doing.

He threw back the covers and piled up some pillows in the figure of a sleeping person, just to be careful. He then left his room and made for the stairs, socked feet quiet against the polished wood. He knew none of the boards creaked, so he was relatively at ease on his way down. The foyer was accommodating arched beams of moonlight, allowing Erik to find his way into the kitchen without knocking into tables or plants.

The fact that everything had been fairly simple up until now—Erik was going to take as a sign that he was doing the right thing.

No matter how rich and opulent, there had to be trash bags in the house somewhere. He searched the utensil cupboard and the broom closet with the light from his phone until he pilfered a large black plastic bag that surely nobody would be suspicious to see missing from the roll of copious others.

He had half an hour until Frost arrived.

With controlled nerves, he exited the kitchen and headed towards the basement. Contrary to what he might’ve expected to be feeling, he wasn’t full of adrenaline or pulsing with energy. It felt mechanical, almost dull, to be walking down the steps and turning around to face the staircase that beholded so much fortune.

This would all be over soon.

And the first step to seeing this through lied in the second step, quite literally, which Erik was easily able to elevate and hoist up above his head, revealing the passage to the vault.

He had time. He could be slow about it. Each foot he set was carefully placed and controlled. He could stop and hear out for sounds, he could assess his surroundings with an astute eye to make sure he would be leaving everything around him the way it was.

Everything but the contents of the safe, of course.

He took the key off his neck and clutched it in his fist until it was slightly painful. Pain helped. Pain reminded him of why he was here. Pain was his catalyst, his motivator. For so long, it was all he had—all he ever relied on.

Tonight he was slipping the key into the hole because his parents were innocent, and so was Charles. He was entering the numbers one-zero-five-one and opening the lock because his parents had so many aspirations for the future, and so did Charles.

He scooped out every banknote from inside that safe because he had spent his entire youth swearing to himself that if there was absolutely anything he could’ve done to save his parents’ lives, he would’ve done it. Which was why Erik couldn’t think of this as wrong, not even as he felt his hands tire from the sheer amount of money he was loading into the bag—no, not where this boy was concerned.

He was not going to let himself wonder _if._

The bag weighed like a large boulder, and Erik feared the plastic might even tear under the burden. Surely that suggested a quantity that was going to please Frost.

He had just enough time to make sure he was alone in the basement above before shutting and locking the empty safe, stowing the bag on the floor above, and climbing the stairs until he was out of the vault, key back around his neck.

And—that was supposed to be the hard part.

\---

If she was punctual, she would’ve been there on time. But Frost was _eager_ , and so there was a white Porsche stood in the driveway almost completely disguised by the blizzard, waiting for him a full twenty minutes early.

Erik slipped on a pair of boots he found in the cloak room and didn’t bother to wear more than his sweatshirt as he hauled the bag over his shoulder and quietly made his way out into the raging snowstorm. The car’s tracks and his own footprints would be safely covered by the morning, which was something to be grateful for, even if the whipping cold made his extremities completely frozen and inert.  

He knocked on the passenger seat window first, so as not to alarm Frost, but she was already watching him from inside—she gestured for him to enter and Erik did so without hesitating. He bundled the bag of cash into his lap before shutting the car door.

“Oh, is all of that for me?” Frost remarked, her gloved hands emerging from the fur of her coat to wrap around the bag Erik handed over. She plunged inside for a wad of cash, all notes of one hundred, she checked, leafing through them delicately—then she peeled off one glove to feel for the authenticity of each note. Brian Xavier didn’t strike Erik as someone who would have left a myriad stash of counterfeit money, but Emma Frost wasn’t taking any chances. “That _bastard_ ,” she muttered after a while.

“So?” Erik asked, mouth dry.

“How much is in here?”

“No clue. I thought I’d leave you the pleasure of counting.”

“Thoughtful of you,” Frost said vapidly, and Erik had to deliberately pretend not to notice the way she stared at the Xavier estate so longingly. “How long do you wager until Charles finds out?”

“He wouldn’t know unless he had the key.”

Again, Frost’s disbelief was apparent in the way her lips parted in concurrence with the narrowing of her eyes.

“He seriously just _gave_ you the key? Are you sure he’s not setting you up?”

“ _No_ —why would he—?”

That couldn’t be possible, could it? Charles trusted him and—why would he _kiss_ him if he wasn’t yet certain of Erik’s loyalties?

“He wouldn’t,” Erik said with a decisive head shake. “And under the assumption that he’ll only ask for the key when I leave, I’ll be needing living arrangements, far from here.”

He looked at Frost expectantly, who turned away to fix her interest on the money once more. There was a white snake-skin briefcase wedged between her legs, and she popped it open to begin loading the money inside of it.

“I can have something organised in a month’s time,” she said. “Stay put until then. Don’t do anything to make him suspicious.”

Erik nodded solemnly. He couldn’t lose Charles’s trust and evoke his suspicions unless he had a place he could flee to. Charles could very well put him back in prison if he wanted to and—whatever the outcome, Erik just hoped he wouldn’t have to be present when the truth unfolded before the boy.

No matter what, in a few weeks he would be parted from Charles, and something told him that the memory of his kiss would be haunting him the most even then.

\---

It was easy to avoid someone when they were avoiding you too.

Especially when their hiding place was a massive, empty mansion with no servants calling them down for any of the meals throughout the day.

Erik made sure that Charles’s footsteps had taken him from the kitchen back to his room, the door shut and the silence restored, before he dared to leave his own bedroom and go to the kitchen to arrange a meal.

Charles always left him just enough food for him to get by, as though he was all too familiar with Erik’s eating habits, and that would be all the communication they would have for the entire day.

He felt guilt. So much guilt.

Enough that he couldn’t face Charles, couldn’t let himself be seen by him, nor could he in turn provide the boy with a gesture that acknowledged him in the subtle ways that Charles would.

Erik kept himself occupied with the books on his table, but he was more aware of how day turned into dusk and then into night, and before he knew it he was just _staring_ at a pale moon sitting atop pale mountains of snow.

It was, in short, a bitterly agonising day that reminded him of the kinds he would spend in jail: looking wistfully at the sky, avoiding interaction with others, and being in utter isolation from start to finish.

He couldn’t do that to himself another day, and neither was he going to be allowed to, as the butler returned in the early hours of the next day. It hadn’t crossed Erik’s sleep-frazzled mind that the person entering the house with a key to the front door could actually be someone who worked here until he was halfway down the stairs with a gun at his hip.

The butler glared at his weapon with a look of disapproval, and didn’t greet him until Erik had put it away and apologised.

Charles was walking down the stairs just as he was making his way up them, but he, unlike Erik, was fully dressed in charcoal coloured corduroy pants and a grey sweater vest over a light blue shirt and that was as far as Erik got before shooting his gaze to the side. Nobody had the right to have a face that made Erik want to tear his eyes away in immediate instinctive reaction, lest he wanted to spend the rest of his day in silent fury at himself—and yet _still,_ despite Erik’s best efforts, he was frustrated that his mind had deceitfully supplied the image of the boy’s perfect little face for him.

He jogged his way up to the next floor; all the while Charles had gone down into the foyer to welcome the butler with a warm hug and a small comment that made them both chuckle.

“Let me go fix you both some breakfast,” the butler was saying chipperly, his arm around Charles’s shoulders. “Does Mr Lehnsherr sleep with his gun in his hand?” was all Erik had heard before they were out of earshot, disappeared into the kitchen, and he was making his way back to his room.

He showered and shaved before pulling on his usual clothes and heading back downstairs. As soon as he entered the kitchen he knew he was being eyed to see if he was still parading with his gun, and without addressing it, he went to sit down at the table.

Today they were having pancakes, and it wasn’t until he was dousing them in maple syrup and melted butter that he truly discovered what the fuss was about. There was a hotly made towering heap of them sitting between Charles and Erik on the table, enough for the butler to excuse himself from the kitchen to go and unpack.

Then they were alone, and Erik was very careful not to move loud or fast enough to grasp Charles’s attention, and he was equally watchful of the boy so that they wouldn’t move for the bottle of syrup at the same time.

Somehow, it still managed to escape his notice that Charles was being very deliberate in the way he was finishing his breakfast, and that the moment Erik rose from his seat to put his plate in the sink, Charles was instantly following him to do the same. When he set his plate over Erik’s, it was polished off, and out of curiosity he just _had_ to know—

Ah. Charles’s cheeks were full.

He held a finger up, indicating him to wait, while he covered his mouth with the other hand, jaw working fast to chow down the morsel he had stuffed rapidly into his mouth.

Gott, his mouth.

No. Erik wasn’t going to stand here and wait for what Charles had to say.

He stormed past the boy and got as far as the table before he felt a tug at his shirt.

“Please, Erik, just _listen_ to me.”

So he’d finished chewing. Erik dropped his shoulders with a sigh.

“I don’t want to talk about anything.”

“You don’t have to talk, just hear me out. Please?”

Charles forced him to turn around by the shirt and Erik went along with the movement pliantly, if only to resort to the fact that he’d given up fighting.

“Erik,” Charles began, and even though he wasn’t looking at the boy, he could tell the boy was desperately trying to get him to look. That was where their significant height difference, and only their height difference, allowed him to do that. “I know exactly why you’re mad at yourself. Believe me, I do.”

Oh but if he truly did, he wouldn’t be saying it so calmly, would he?

“You think that because I was drinking and well—sort of in a vulnerable position, that you had taken advantage of me. But Erik, I don’t feel that way. I know you would never.”

Erik studied the floor harder.

“Drunk or sober I _still_ would’ve wanted you to kiss me and—perhaps I would’ve wanted you to be a bit more… responsive, but, the important thing is that you don’t have to feel guilty for something we both wanted.”

He swore he could even hear in Charles’s voice the parts that made him blush and the parts that made his eyes sparkle and he couldn’t stand it anymore he couldn’t _bear_ it anymore.

“Charles I would be extremely grateful if we just—never talked about that night again. Am I clear?”

He didn’t know about being _clear_ , but he was certainly harsh. Charles had ducked his head in silence, and Erik wasn’t so sure he liked himself at all anymore after seeing the result of getting his way.

“Alright,” Charles mumbled, clawing at the hem of his sweater vest. He picked his head up as he said, “We won’t talk about it. But will you at least… look at me? You’re making me feel like I’m repulsively ugly or as though one look will turn you into stone.”

Erik might’ve laughed at that. If Charles was repulsively ugly to him, they wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.

“Fine,” Erik agreed, settling his gaze on the boy’s face. Miraculously, there was no instantaneous need to jerk off, but worse: he couldn’t breathe.

 _Those_ were the lips he’d kissed and they were also the ones he’d pulled away from and how in hell had he managed to do that?

How was he not kissing them right now?

Charles was wearing a look that seemed to project _don’t look at my lips if you don’t want to talk about our kiss._

“Excuse me,” Erik said, stalking out of the kitchen and up the stairs then running into his bedroom and shutting the door.

He was suddenly very conscious of which one of them was a teenager and which one of them was actually acting like one.

He placed his head in his hands and _sighed._


	6. Chapter 6

If mercy could be had on people like him, then the shadow of the person creeping into the gym did not belong to Charles.

He looked over his shoulder, and—

Fair enough.

Charles wasn’t even dressed for exercise. He was clad in the stripy pyjama bottoms he wore to bed and a patchy old woolly jumper that had overly long sleeves. And those furry socks that Erik kind of loved.

He dropped the weights after completing his fiftieth rep and rolled his shoulders backwards and forwards, feeling his joints pop and crack.

“How can I help you?” Erik panned, his tone and words inferring what exactly he was here to do: be of service, and that was all. He’d done his part for Frost, repaid her in the way that she wanted, and now he was going to do the same for Charles, being his protection in return for his hospitality. And that was all there was to it. That was the way Erik’s world worked.

If he told himself this enough times, it would become second nature.

He turned around to meet Charles’s eyes without any indication that he was being affected by them. He pressed his lips together and locked his hands behind his back.

Charles pulled on his sleeves until they covered his hands entirely. Some of his hair was out of place and Erik couldn’t even _comprehend_ how and why the sight provoked a need to step forward and settle it into order. It seemed to take more energy to simply restrain himself than it might have if he were to juggle dumbbells.

“Actually I just… wanted to know if…” Charles bit his bottom lip, considering, “If we’re not going to talk about that night and instead pretend like it never even happened in the first place, then—why can’t we just go back to being the way we were before?” He tipped his head to the side and meekly added, “Or is that not a possibility?”

Erik pulled his shirt up to his face and wiped the sweat from under his eyes and his forehead. He cleared his throat and placed his hands on his hips.

“I don’t see why we can’t,” he muttered, shrugging. If they did go back to the way they were, that would be safest for them both. Damn him but he was never going to admit how much he liked what he had with Charles.

“That’s wonderful,” the boy nodded repeatedly, sleeves flapping by his sides. He offered Erik a nervous little smile, devoid of the bright wideness of his usual grin, but pleasant all the same. “So we can go back to playing chess together? We’ve missed two nights, after all.”

“I can think of something else we’ve missed,” Erik said, eyeing the way Charles looked so constantly defenseless, standing here in the presence of a convict who he had turned into his chess buddy.

Erik watched Charles as confusion flickered through his eyes and parted his lips before he was storming forward on quick legs and backing the boy into the wall—gently, so as not to hurt his head, but with enough pace that he could seize both of Charles’s wrists in one hand, and pin the boy’s chest back by the length of his forearm. He was now stuck to the wall, shackled almost, and he looked up at Erik with alarm, then simply, chagrin.

His pupils had expanded momentarily, and they were now slowly going back to normal. Which—if that Psychology textbook had been accurate, then it meant he was high on adrenaline, his body on alert and activating a fight-or-flight mechanism in order to deal with the situation, but, now he had _relaxed_. His eyes had gone back to normal and he no longer looked like he was under duress. Erik had him against the wall, and yet—

So he shoved forward, clenching the boy’s wrists tighter over his head. Making it harder for escape. He neared the boy until he was looming over him and, finally, watched so closely that he had to look from each eye as the blackness swelled.

“I am your attacker and I have you like _this_ ,” he enunciated the word with a harder shove, forcing a breath out from Charles’s lungs that almost made him feel guilty. “What would you do?”

“I don’t… you’ve never…” Charles wet his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue and blinked. Surely he wasn’t trying to distract Erik by being seductive, was he? No—he did indeed look frantic, and it was Erik’s mind that was full of filth.

“Come _on_ , Charles,” he ground out, because the sooner they got out of this position, the better. He could already feel the heat of Charles’s thighs against his own and it was making him very aware of how his sweaty body was aligned against Charles’s smaller one. “What is the first thing you will do in order to fight me off?”

“I could try and,” Charles paused, thinking—he was shifting from foot to foot, and unlike Erik he wasn’t wearing shoes, so he had that disadvantage too. _Good_ , Erik thought. It was better for Charles to realise just how unpredictable an attack like this could be, how one moment he could be preparing for bed and the next facing danger, with nothing and nobody to rely on but his own self. Charles looked up at his hands. “You have my hands I can’t—I can’t use them to push you away.”

“Think,” Erik urged the boy. “Pretend this isn’t my arm, but my gun at your throat. Pretend I’m the most _despicable_ man you’ve ever known and you _have_ to find some way to escape.”

Charles started to breathe faster. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You will _not_ hurt me, just do something!”

Charles threw his knee up to Erik’s groin.

Erik dropped to the floor.

It was effectively painful. He could’ve used more force, should the situation have been real, but it was good enough. Erik curled into a foetal position and groaned.

“I am _so very_ sorry Erik,” Charles was saying, placing his hand on Erik’s shoulder as he rocked from side to side, hands between his legs. “Did it—Oh God, did I really badly hurt you? Erik you shouldn’t have let me _do_ that! I’m so sorry!”

“‘S’fine,” Erik hissed out, even though the throbbing pain gave no indication of ever subsiding. “That was good. Did well.”

Charles was now sitting on his knees looking like he was questioning everything he’d ever done in his life.

“How did I become so violent? What have you done to me?”

Erik pressed his face into the floor with a grunt, thinking that if he had the choice, he’d rather like to die instead.

“It’s… necessary… that you know... how to defend y’self.”

Charles winced and brought his face closer to Erik’s.

“I hope I haven’t done too much damage,” he said, haphazardly patting Erik’s arm.

“I’ve had worse.” Maybe he was going to make it after all. “So what if I’ll never have children?”

“E _rik_ ,” Charles droned. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He finally picked himself off the ground and with help from Charles, got up onto his feet. A shower would help soothe the burn of pain, and then an appetizing meal would help build his power back up.

As it was, he felt like a rickety old man, leaning on Charles for support as he shuffled his way out of the gym.

\---

The moment he reached Charles’s study, he wanted to turn around and leave.

He knew the boy was already inside, waiting for him—he’d been so keen to play, and he’d even mentioned it to Erik again during dinner. It would be downright wimpish of him to neglect Charles a game of chess, just because he no longer wanted to be in the room that they’d kissed in.

He’d been so successful, up until now, in not thinking about it.

Steeling himself, he turned the handle and entered, depending purely upon Charles’s reaction to being in that room with him again. But Charles was mature, and he wasn’t going to disregard what Erik had said about not discussing their kiss. Neither did he seem to show any behaviour that could have suggested a kiss even took place between them, and Erik was grateful for that, even willing to play another time the same night.

But - he was sitting right next to where they’d kissed.

Had he really been disappointingly unresponsive?

“Erik, it’s your move,” Charles reminded him, and pulled his focus back into the game. They never did finish their second round, too evenly matched and stuck at an impasse to continue, and so they abandoned the game in pursuit of sleep.

Another night, his bed was horrendously large and empty.

He slipped into one side, the side closest to the drawer with his gun and phone, and breathed out through his nose. He was only just contemplating the idea of stacking two pillows under his head when the door came open, let in the way for a small figure to enter, and then closed shut.

Charles didn’t say a word and Erik didn’t move a bone as the boy climbed into his bed, his socked feet brushing his own. He snaked an arm around Erik’s waist, both of them facing the same side.

“I missed you,” Charles said quietly, as an explanation.

He sounded as though he was giving a lazy, half-hearted warning when he said, “ _Charles_.”

“I’m sorry about your balls.”

Erik snorted and patted the boy’s hand.

“Go to sleep,” he said, and hoped that he would too, now that Charles was close to him again.

\---

For Erik, a good undisturbed nine hours of sleep was a luxury, so much so that he would wake up feeling like nothing could hurt him, nothing could ever overpower him—everything was under his control.

On the other hand, when Charles woke up from a good night’s sleep, it seemed like he’d just experienced the most spectacular thing. yawning through a wide smile and hugging Erik’s arm as he spoke, “Morning. Did you sleep well?”

“Uh... well enough, yes.” His arm was stiff in Charles’s grip.

It felt too early to be held and talked to, alien, too, just to think about how the boy had his head on Erik’s shoulder and his hand wound around Erik’s elbow. His other hand reached down for his hand, and he willingly bent his arm so that Charles could grasp at his fingers.

“Erik you have such _beautiful_ hands. _Look_ at them.”

Charles held out Erik’s hand out in front of their faces as if it was a sight to behold, tracing the length of each finger with his thumb, then smoothing over the veins trapped under his skin.

“Hardly,” Erik muttered. Just considering what he’d done with these hands would potentially drag down the light atmosphere and take Charles down with him.

“I wish my hands looked like yours. Mine are so child-like. They’ll never grow.” He placed his own next to Erik’s for comparison. “See?”

Erik frowned, dismissively pulling his hand away as though Charles had never spoken. “If you say so.”

He threw away the covers and headed lethargically for the en suite. He could feel Charles watching him as he went, hear the disappointment in his voice as he shouted, “I’ll see you at breakfast,” before leaving for his own room.

The day passed without too much fanfare.

After breakfast, Charles decided to start on the pile of his school work, which kept him occupied and Erik… bored. The snow was still beating down at the windows, and certain rooms of the house were so outrageously cold that Erik couldn’t even feel the feet that carried him back out.

Charles didn’t say so, but it was obvious that he was delighted to see Erik bored while he was working. He paced inside the boy’s study for a while, and finding himself completely ignored did enough to wound his ego that he didn’t bother returning. In the kitchen, the staff was busy cooking and cleaning while the small television hooked up in the corner wailed out raucously loud music. Erik stepped in for the newspaper and retreated to the lounge to read up its contents.

There was a narrow column on the fourth page speculating about Brian Xavier’s death.

> _Loss of esteemed nuclear scientist Dr Brian Xavier continues to cast a dark shadow over the world of science and criminal justice alike. The NYPD have yet to produce a lead for the whereabouts of Xavier’s former colleague and alleged perpetrator, Kurt Marko, and claim the involvement of the CIA is now crucial to the investigation. Marko has been untraceable since his interrogation, where he evaded charges with the help of a strong alibi, but sources say his son, Cain Marko, also linked with the murder, is still residing in the States. Head investigator Lt. Leonard Mitchell claimed in a statement released earlier this month that this case was “high on his priority list” and that his thoughts and well-wishes are with Brian Xavier’s 38 year old widow, Sharon Xavier, and their only son, 17 year old Charles Xavier, this Christmas._

Erik rearranged the newspaper’s pages so that he could close and fold it. He shuddered to think that the Markos were still gallivanting somewhere, yet to be taken into custody. That could be downright detrimental to Charles’s safety, given that the moment police lost interest in keeping their search tight, the Markos might just slip past their awareness—the way _Shaw_ continuously did, after all—and find their way back to the mansion.

While Erik was here, they weren’t going to breathe the same air as Charles.

\---

In his room, he opened his bottom drawer and took out the envelope stuffed in the back. He shook out the three photographs inside it and picked up the one that had ‘YOUR TARGET’ written large and underlined on the back.

Charles looked so jovial and unassuming in the photo that was quite obviously a professional one taken at school. It must have been old, but Charles still looked the same.

This was Erik’s first glimpse of Charles’s face, the very first indication of how goddamn difficult it was going to be to inflict any kind of harm on a face that smiled this sweetly.

“Is that… are you looking at a picture of me?”

Erik was jolted into action, his pulse pounding as he rapidly kicked his drawer shut and stood, hiding his hands behind his back.

Charles was standing in the doorway of his bedroom, one brow raised towards his hairline.

Erik cleared his throat. “You’ve finished your work?” he asked neutrally.

A small smile quirked a corner of Charles’s lips before he leaped onto the bed and jumped onto the other side of the room, which Erik had already vacated in order to run around the bed and towards the bathroom.

Charles managed to catch up, chasing him to the door.

“You so were!” Charles said, arm stretching to grab the photograph Erik had held much, much high above his head. Charles jumped and circled him while Erik switched hands, bent down when the boy sprang too high, and raised it towards the ceiling where his arms simply could not reach. “Oh, admit it,” Charles huffed, placing his hands on his knees. Erik knew that Charles wasn’t tired; he was trying to _fool_ him into relaxing, too. “You were sitting in your room gazing at a picture of me, c’mon, fess up big man.”

“No,” Erik said. “I wasn’t.”

“Then show me!”

“ _No_.”

“It’s alright. I’m here now, in the flesh, for you to feast your eyes on.”

Stubbornly, Erik persisted in keeping the photograph well away from the boy, sworn to continue until he quit—because Erik wasn’t.

But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

Without much of a choice, Erik reluctantly slipped the photograph into his sweatpants.

And now it was truly concealed from Charles, and his questioning eyes.

He took a step back first, and then gaped, looking aghast and amused at once.

Erik shrugged.

“There is a picture of me inside your pants. _There is a picture of me inside your pants._ ”

For a second, Erik honestly thought Charles was shameless enough to do it—to slip his hands past his waistband in order to fish the picture out—but when the boy came forward again, he was reaching for Erik’s wrist and tugging him out of the room.

“You are going to sit through dinner with that picture of me in your pants, I’ll make sure of it.”

Erik may not have succeeded in convincing Charles that it wasn’t his image in his hands, but at least the boy didn’t catch the words on the back. He could be relieved by that.

Charles had his eyes trained on him during the entire meal. The boy found the prospect of his school picture being inside Erik’s sweatpants so utterly entertaining that he couldn’t look away for a second, absorbed in what Erik might do. In return, Erik did no such thing to give away the situation to anyone around them.

At least he’d given Charles that satisfaction; he waited until dessert, which he knew the boy would never abandon, to excuse himself and dart up to his bathroom, where he extricated the photo with burning humiliation and tore it to shreds, but did it so that the written part was facing him.

Charles was no longer his target.

Charles was grinning innocently when he returned, and laughed throughout their chess games, and went to sleep with his furry feet pressing against Erik’s under the sheets.

\---

He didn’t see Charles until it was late in the morning and he’d just come out of the shower, steam obscuring his vision as he wrapped a towel around his hips. He was clearing the mirror when he heard a knock, and he padded over to open the door.

Charles was standing there in his night clothes, a hesitant little smile on his face.

“Yes?”

“Hi! I have er, a request.”

Erik adjusted the towel around his neck so that it covered his back better before he opened the door further.

“Sorry to just barge in, I actually needed something you might have,” he continued, eyes scanning Erik’s shelf full of toiletries. They’d all been here when he arrived, and there were some items he genuinely didn’t understand the use of. “Nobody tends to go into town and do the shopping until the end of the month, so I thought I’d just ask you if you have any shaving cream,” he said proudly.

Erik narrowed his eyes. “Shaving cream? What do you need it for?”

Charles shot him a sarcastic look, hands on his hips. “My legs.” He shook his head. “What do you think?”

The boy pointed towards his chin.

Erik squinted even more, moving Charles closer towards the light. Was Charles really growing facial hair? It was almost impossible to spot, but—oh, there was the slightest hint of golden brown on the boy’s upper lip, and a subtle scrape of hairs against his thumb when he ran it over Charles’s jaw.

“Hm.”

He took out a disposable razor and shaving cream. Charles’s face was damp, so he assumed the boy had washed his face - and that was probably when he’d had the revelation.

Erik was spraying shaving cream onto his palm when Charles spoke.

“Oh - you’re—are you going to do it for me?” He sounded pleasantly surprised.

“If you don’t mind,” Erik said carefully. The boy smiled at him in encouragement and hopped onto the ledge of the sink so that his face was the right height for Erik to reach. He stepped in between Charles’s parted legs and began lathering the cream over the boy’s face.

“This is my first time,” Charles declared with a smirk.

“I’ll go easy on you.”

Charles let out a giddy chuckle. Erik turned his face to the side and began to gently glide the double-bladed razor down the boy’s cheek, going with the grain. It was strange; he’d only ever shaved his own high cheekbones and narrow face, and Charles’s youthful, rounded cheeks beneath the careful drag of his razor was a substantial change. There was also hardly any hair under the blades, and of course, the damned sight of Charles’s lips being framed by pale shaving cream.

When Erik was done, he cleaned the razor off in the sink, showing Charles the few, countable hairs that washed down the drain. He ran the back of his fingers up and down Charles’s smooth face and ignored the way the boy inhaled and closed his eyes for a sudden moment.

He tried ignoring it for the entire day.

Just the smallest hint of his touch had Charles so affected, and—

He couldn’t be thinking like that. Charles was brimming with hormones and recklessness, of course he was reacting in ways he couldn’t control. Really, it was himself that he needed to keep in check.


	7. Chapter 7

The next few days passed stupendously fast; his mornings were spent seeking out Charles around the house when he wasn’t in bed, his afternoons spent reading in the boy’s study, his evenings in the gym before he’d be dragged back for a game of chess, and his nights with Charles hugging his waist from behind as they slept.

Today was going to pass like the rest, and Erik was sure that if they continued like this, then his impact on Charles wasn’t going to be so deep as to make leaving him harder, but then—

“Erik…”

“Yes, Charles.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve.” Charles gave him a light whack on his arm and rolled onto his side, partly on top of Erik. “We have _got_ to leave the house tonight. We could go out into the city, catch the firework display, watch the ball drop in Times Square—”

“There is no way we’re going to a place that busy with so many people and so much noise.” What if he lost Charles? Was Charles even thinking straight?

The boy pouted, pulling the blanket over his head and diving face-first into his pillow so that he was completely hidden.

Erik sighed.

Surely it wouldn’t _hurt_ if they drove out to a nearby town to watch the fireworks, maybe until the countdown, and then came back home.

If it would make Charles happy. If it was the very last thing he could do to make Charles happy.

Then he would suggest the idea to Charles, endure his bone-crushing hug, and be subjected to his infectious smiles for the entire day.

By around seven, when the snow had calmed down and the driver had finished eating his dinner with them, they headed out of Westchester and towards the lights, where there was enough civilization that the streets had been cleared of snow. Erik stopped the driver outside a lively park and took the man’s number so that he could call him from his own cell when they were ready to be collected.

Charles hopped out of the car with his scarf snug around his neck and the collars of his coat turned up past his ears, and Erik placed his arm around him just so that he didn’t look so _cold_.

“Thank you for bringing me,” Charles said, leaning against Erik as they walked along the sidewalk. There were carts and vendors of hot, seasonal food, some flower stalls and even a small makeshift studio where a woman was sat painting a cartoonized version of the couple seated in front of her, which they stopped to watch with interest.

Charles enjoyed stopping to watch everything, really. Street dance performers, mimers and magicians, and even some balloons being twisted into animals. Charles even stopped to converse with a beggar, which was when Erik decided that they were going to move on to take a stroll through the park.

Charles tipped his head onto Erik’s shoulder and wove his arm around Erik’s with a contented sigh.

“Why are you wearing those stupid gloves?” Erik asked with a frown, grabbing Charles’s hands and covering the parts of his fingers that were bare to the cold. Charles wiggled his fingers out of his grip and dug his hand into Erik’s pocket to take out his phone. His heart gave a small leap, even though he was certain he’d deleted any text from or to Frost. Charles was just checking the time.

“Just under two hours,” he noted, then slotted Erik’s phone back into place. “Can we go somewhere warm? Preferably where there’s a television screen.”

After a bit of searching, they ended up at a bar that wasn’t packed, even though free beer was being served until midnight, and neither of them had even thought to wonder why.

Strange. There was hardly a single woman here.

 _Very_ strange.

Charles, however, proceeded to make himself comfortable, unravelling his scarf and shucking off his coat before placing both on a barstool that faced the flat screen on the wall showing live footage of Times Square.

Erik was just about to lean into Charles’s ear and suggest they move elsewhere, but they were suddenly being handed frothy beer that tasted absolutely disgusting and reminded him of his sombre teenage years and alright, if Charles had deliberately led him into a gay bar, then _fine_ , he wasn’t going to march him out and ruin his so-far pretty good day the way he had constantly done for himself.

“How ghastly is this beer?” Charles said, making a face even as he took another sip.

“Might be the worst I’ve ever tasted,” he agreed.

“Bet you wish you were rather having blood stew.”

“Oh, you remember that?”

“I wasn’t going to forget the night we got drunk and talked about our sexual encounters, was I.”

Then Charles darted his gaze away from him and had more of his beer.

Erik did the same.

They had another two beers.

Had he really admitted to Charles, _It’s been so damn long_ since he’d fucked another man?

Gott, people were ogling them left right and centre, and Erik’s skin was starting to prickle.

He moved his stool so that he was closer to the counter. Charles actually belched obnoxiously loud when a man approached them, for him or the boy Erik didn’t even know, just seeing him spin around leave was enough for him to sigh with relief.

“Pardon me,” Charles said after a while, and Erik thumped him on the back.

“Good work,” he said.

“Thank you,” Charles said with a bow of his head. “Actually, it’s you who should be thanking me. He looked like he wanted to _ravage_ you. Tear your turtleneck with his teeth type.”

Erik frowned and turned his head to face the boy who looked far too innocent, sipping from his glass, to have been the same person who had just said those words. “What?”

“Oh I’m sorry - was his interest welcome?” Charles’s face was blank, expressionless. He shuffled closer to Erik and leaned towards him. “I won’t mind if you want to pursue someone, just so you know. It’s one hundred percent alright with me, as long as you let me watch.”

When Erik’s jaw dropped, Charles spluttered.

“I’m kidding!”

Erik eyed the boy from head to toe. Was he even real? Was he really wearing a blue cardigan? Was that a _pen_ in his breast pocket?

Charles rolled his eyes and scooted closer to him. “Alright, look around you,” he said, cupping Erik’s chin in order to physically turn his face towards the crowd. “Who out of this lot would you shag?”

Erik reluctantly swept his gaze across the room. Did Charles really think he was going to find himself so enamoured on first sight that he would lose all self-control and hop into bed with whoever he was attracted to? Or was what Charles _wanted_?

How could he kiss Erik one day and then—

Oh. Just last week. Charles’s soft lips.

“Look _there_ ,” Charles said, forcing Erik to face the man standing against the back wall in a red t-shirt. He had the words ‘beauty’ written on his chest, with an arrow pointing up to his face, and just below it read the words ‘and the beast’, followed by an arrow pointing to his crotch. “He’s looking at you,” Charles whispered.

The man was on the shorter side, a bit like Charles, but the command of his presence more than made up for it.

A bit like Charles, there, too.

He started to make his way over to them, and Charles immediately straightened, grabbing his drink and crossing one leg over the other primly.

The man had curly dark hair cropped short and skin that looked naturally golden, with its own sheen, and he was looking from Erik to Charles like the sight of them was putting a pleasant taste in his mouth.

He stopped when he reached the bar, leaning forward against the counter with his face turned to them.

“I see you boys have been having difficulty taking your eyes off of me. Like what you’ve been looking at?”

Charles let out a heavy sigh, then placed his drink well behind him. “This was going _so well_ before you had to ruin it with that cheesy line.”

The man raised his brows in amusement, turning his body towards Charles. “You have quite a mouth on you,” he said with a feistiness that was all playful and friendly, until Erik could see the man understand the true meaning of his words when he stole a glance of Charles’s lips.

“This is a big misunderstanding,” Erik heard himself say, his voice thundery. “Charles I never said—”

The boy ignored him and turned to the man. “Do excuse the my brashness, but do you have a preference to top or to bottom in bed?”

When the man comprehended that Charles was indeed serious, the lightness in his eyes turned dark, and as he licked his smirking lips and moved closer to them, making sure every sway of his body looked good, Erik knew there was something going on that shouldn’t be.

“You really think I’d limit how much fun I could have?” he said with a chuckle, before sobering and moving closer, bending forward so that his face was inches from theirs. “After all, I would be a very lucky boy,” the man said lowly, eyes fixed on Erik, “If you were fucking me,” then he looked at Charles and pointed, “while I was fucking you.”

Erik didn’t react.

Charles, however, went scarlet.

He reached behind him for his drink, and when he put it to his mouth, he saw it was empty. He then slipped off his stool to order another glass, hands clutching the counter. His blushing hadn’t stopped.

The man shared a glance with Erik, eyes glimmering with realisation, before rising to his full height and strolling over to where Charles was stood.

“So. You must be a virgin.”

Charles placed his hand on the back of his neck and ducked his head, nodding. The man shared another glance with Erik, but this time his gaze was full of disbelief. He leaned an elbow onto the counter where he was standing close enough to touch Charles with his hands, and Erik was suddenly clutching his glass very tightly.

When was Charles going to tell this man to get lost?

“Tragic,” he said, clicking his tongue. “How anyone could be around you and… _unbelievable_. But—what about your friend there? He never…?”

Charles peered over at Erik, the man in question, and then shied away, looking back down at his hands.

“ _No_. He’d never—he…” Charles paused, raked his teeth over his bottom lip, then tossed another bashful glance towards Erik. “I _wish_ he would, but—you should’ve seen him after we _kissed_. He didn’t let himself look at me for two days.”

“Oh?” the man said in interest, lips curling up into a smile. “He won’t put out for you? And… do you want him bad?”

Erik didn’t need to know the answer to that.

He didn’t have to hear this conversation.

Even if it was, undoubtedly, happening for his very ears—he wasn’t going to let it concern him.

Erik didn’t move his head; he simply lifted his gaze to the side and felt a jolt of electricity when Charles was already looking at him. He turned his face away, grinding his jaw.

“I want him _so_ bad.”

Erik drew another sip of the disgusting beer and didn’t even feel it go down his throat.

“You do,” the man was saying, but his voice was a whisper, and it irked Erik to think that he was close enough to Charles’s ear to be able to lower it. “You want him where nobody else has been, right?”

“I want him to be the first man who touches me.”

“Hmm.”

There was a pause. A deadly pause, and Erik had been clenching his teeth so hard that his head was hurting.

“Do you want his cock? Say you want his cock.”

Another pause, and now Erik’s head had whipped round fast enough to put a strain in his neck, but nothing compared to the pain of seeing Charles standing so close to the man and letting his fingers stroke his cheek, then his lips, then down to his throat, even as the boy said:

“I want his cock. I would take… all of his cock.” Charles licked his lips, eyes shut. “Even in my mouth.”

The man’s eyes jumped to Erik, brows raised.

How could this complete stranger just—

Erik finished his glass and dumped it on the counter, mindless of the noise and the clatter as the glass spun to keep flat on its base.

Charles was—impossible. He _wasn’t_ real.

He was letting that arrogant stranger press a hand to his hip while he talked about wanting _Erik_ and—was he angry? Was he—?

Oh. His hands had balled into fists in his lap. He knew what that meant.

He felt _anger_ towards the man. All because he was getting to lay his hands on the boy, wherever he so pleased, and—

Charles wanted those hands to be _Erik’s_.

He’d never wanted so intensely to grant Charles exactly what he wanted.

“I can tell you do. And you’d be good at it, too - Charles, was it?”

He nodded.

He let the man run his palm down his arm, then cross towards his back.

“Charles. You’d suck him off so good, he’d wonder why he ever made you wait so long. He’s being so unfair to you, Charles, you poor thing.”

“Do you think… maybe he’d… if I was more experienced with men? Would he want me then?”

No no no _no._

Erik felt like all of the power rooting him down, holding him back, would all transform into the driving force for his knuckles to reach the man’s face—

“Absolutely not, Charles. He wants you exactly the way you are.”

Suddenly this man was talking _sense._

Because—

Erik swallowed.

He looked up at Charles and felt all of his anger abate.

“You really think he wants me?” Charles asked the man, even though his eyes were on Erik.

“I’m _certain._ And if you want to make sure of it, I know something you can do…”

All of that anger rose again as the man’s hand went lower, his fingertips brushing the round curve of Charles’s arse as he moved into his ear to speak.

And Erik couldn’t hear a word.

Suddenly there was an outbreak of noise all around him, people flocking towards the television with glasses in their hands, and it was very abruptly obvious that they were closing in on the last few moments of the year.

All Erik was concerned with was seeing the man finally pull away, take a step back, and say aloud, “It never fails.”

Erik didn’t care. He didn’t care about what stupid seduction technique he’d just shared—the man had his _hand_ on Charles, all over Charles, and now that same hand was holding onto the boy’s and pulling him into the crowd.

“TWENTY!”

“NINETEEN!”

“EIGHTEEN!”

The man put his arm around Charles’s shoulders and started to join in with the countdown, and Erik’s head was pounding—did he just _let_ this happen, by being silent? Now they were grinning at each other, facing each other, like they were about to—

“ELEVEN!”

“TEN!”

“NINE!”

Erik shot out of his seat like a bullet. He had _eight_ seconds to remedy this. He had an endless number of people standing in his way and he shouldered through them like they were nothing more than the air.

He had five seconds to reach Charles.

He had three seconds to wait until the man’s arm slid away from around Charles, and he waited only one more before he was releasing a heavy breath and grabbing Charles’s face in his hands.

“TWO!”

“ONE!”

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

Erik was kissing Charles.

His eyes were _squeezed_ shut, hands tight around the boy’s face, and his lips were pressing into Charles’s with so much anger and force that he didn’t even register the sweetness of it until Charles took over—he cajoled Erik with a hand through his hair, then tilted his head so that he had leverage for his tongue to sweep past the stubborn line of Erik’s lips and enter his mouth.

Then, there were fireworks.

Everywhere. Explosions, noise, chaos, clapping and cheering, the man’s voice saying “I told you it never fails!” and now Charles’s kiss was less that and more of a grin crushing into Erik’s lips, the tip of his tongue feeling the spreading, wide smile on the boy’s mouth.

He stroked Charles’s cheeks as he ended their kiss, slowly, as though pulling apart too quickly would hurt the boy. He was still holding Charles’s face, and the boy hadn’t removed his hand from Erik’s hair. And so Erik had to make the first move, taking his hand away from the boy’s cheek and reaching up to clutch Charles’s hand from where it was now around his neck.

“Let’s get out,” he said, and with that hold, he tugged Charles towards the door where they could escape.

It wasn’t until they were outside in an alleyway, under the colours blasting into the sky, that Erik had realised why he was holding Charles so close against his chest, inside his arms, as he brushed kiss after kiss on his lips—they’d forgotten his coat and scarf inside.  

“Uhnnn,” Charles whined, pulling Erik back towards him by his coat and running his hands up the material of his turtleneck. “Leave it. Kiss me.”

“Charles, you’re freezing,” he insisted, feeling the boy’s cold nose against his cheek.

“Actually, I’m feeling quite warm.” Charles nuzzled Erik’s jaw, breathing hard. At least he still had those stupid gloves on, whatever good they did to keep him warm.

“I can feel you shivering,” he pointed out, running his hand up and down the boy’s back.

“I am,” Charles agreed, tipping his head up to allow another kiss. “But not because of the cold.”

Erik didn’t want to smile and be obvious, but the way he knocked their foreheads together and closed his jacket around Charles and zipped it halfway up his back, both of them fitted inside it—he knew he was spectacularly unsuccessful.

And he was unprepared. He had never been this unprepared, in fact. But letting someone see his happiness? How could he _ever_ have anticipated happiness and how to deal with it when it had never been on his horizon?

When his parents were killed, he prepared himself to hunt down and avenge. When Shaw was dead, he was prepared to be arrested for his actions. And then, when he entered the Xavier estate—

 _Charles_ had been the one who advised him to prepare for extreme boredom. And now, they were standing in an alleyway, and Erik was watching the vibrant, spiralling fireworks in the glassy reflection in Charles’s eyes as he pushed the waves of his hair back behind his ears and focused on not getting an erection.

In that case… “We should call our ride,” Erik said, taking his phone out of his jacket pocket and dialling the driver’s number. Charles rested his head on Erik’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around his midriff, but a few moments after his call ended, the boy was pulling away and looking behind him. Erik turned around to see a man coming towards them with a relieved smile, holding Charles’s coat in one hand and his scarf in the other.

“You guys are still around! Hey I think this might be yours,” he said, and when he came closer to them Erik realised it was _that same man._ Erik tightened one arm around Charles’s waist and took a step back to reach for both items with one hand.

“Thank you so much for bringing these,” Charles said, flashing a grin with his overly kissed lips and making Erik’s stomach tighten. He moved them back towards the wall, further away from the man, and Charles huffed with irritation, even if he didn’t say anything to stop him.

The man must have known exactly what Erik was implying, because he didn’t linger for much longer.

“So I’ll - see you lovebirds around, yeah?”

Erik watched Charles carefully and when the boy’s lips parted to speak, Erik raised his brows.

“What?” Charles whispered at him.

“Don’t you think you’ve told him enough?” he whispered back, wrapping the coat around the boy. He leaned over his shoulder and shouted at the man behind them, “Thanks for all of your help. We’ll be going now.”

Charles blushed as Erik dropped a kiss on the corner of his mouth and then didn’t move, just pressed his nose to Charles’s cheek and inhaled.

Eventually, the man left.

“He just wanted a threesome, Erik,” Charles said, matter-of-fact.

“He’s out of his mind if he thinks I’m sharing you,” Erik said, and he wasn’t sure he was supposed to say that aloud but he’d lost control by now. Charles shivered again. “We should start heading back.”

“You need to unzip me,” Charles said, and Erik did so carefully before helping him into his coat and draping his scarf around his neck. Charles had felt good against him, perhaps too good, and nothing about this day felt real until there was space between their bodies.

Still, Charles insisted they held hands, raising their arms over fire hydrants and pulling each other to appropriate sides in order to move out of people’s way on the sidewalk. The park was almost in view when Erik gave in and bowed his head so Charles’s pouted lips could reach him, and then he felt all semblance of time—and the fact that it was constantly _moving_ —flee from him, Charles’s wooly gloves and cold fingers captured in his hands.

It was slightly terrifying.

Why did it have to be _him_ making Charles blush happily and why did it have to be _Charles_ making him feel like he had no hold on reality, why did it have to be like _this_ , when Charles could’ve been kissing someone who wasn’t a murderer and Erik could’ve been deservedly alone—

Simple. Because he wasn’t letting that happen.

He kept kissing and kissing Charles like they were inarguably perfect together, couldn’t even stop to let himself breathe.

And if that wasn’t terrifying…

“Charles,” he whispered, pulling away. He squeezed the boy’s cold hands. “We should go.” He couldn’t even feel the snow, and there it was, settled on Charles’s hair, sitting on his eyelashes.

They found the car in the middle of the road, lining up for a parking spot that it was definitely not going to get, given the slow traffic, so they easily made their presence known with a wave from the road before crossing over to get inside.

“Wait,” Charles said, pressing a hand to Erik’s chest, his attention divided between the road and something up the sidewalk. “Hold on, I’ll be back.”

Charles set off on a jog, and Erik called for him to return, to at least slow down because if he slipped—

He stopped in front of the beggar they had seen earlier. He crouched down and said something, something that made them both smile, then he started to take off his coat and scarf.

“Charles!” Erik shouted, but it made no difference to the boy, who was now dropping both items into the beggar’s lap and standing up. He’d just - just _given_ his clothes away, and then waved cheerily before returning to where Erik was stood and walking back towards the car that had moved a hair’s width.

“Sorry,” Charles said, hugging himself as he matched Erik’s pace.

“You’re—” There wasn’t a word. He sealed his lips, because clearly they were only good at one thing, when it came to Charles, and he companiably curled his arm around the boy as they walked the rest of the way. Once inside, there was enough heat permeating the car for Erik to no longer feel like he had to hide Charles under his clothes. Enough for them to no longer be touching.

The driver started to talk about how there was traffic up this street and that one, no way to enter this road and no way to leave that other one, and Erik was half-listening, the rest of him watching Charles’s fingers walk towards his hand on the seat. Charles had taken the glove off of this hand. He let his smallest finger overlap Erik’s, and for a while that was their only point of contact - until the next finger came to rest over Erik’s, then the other.  

“My dog hates New Year! He gets so scared of the fireworks and noise, he sleeps on my pillow!” the driver chuckled.

Erik hummed, watching as Charles parted his legs wide so that their knees could touch.

“You remember my dog, Charles? I brought him over last summer.”

Charles jolted, moving away from Erik and sitting forward so he was closer to the driver.

“The German Shepherd? Of course I remember him. How big is he now?”

“Oh he’s huge! If I put him on his back feet he’s almost as tall as me!” the man laughed again, when suddenly the car in front of him was racing forward on a green light and the traffic was _moving_ and soon they’d be back in that mansion with nobody to watch them.

If only Erik’s mind could switch off and let him be the bad person he was about to be, as he let Charles lead the way up the staircase, his eyes fixed on his own feet lest he trip looking elsewhere—after all, he was by no means a good person. He was already a bad person, about to do worse, entering Charles’s room and shutting the door behind him.

The dark meant Charles missed his mouth when he went in for a kiss, and their slightly drunken state meant Erik’s jacket was almost impossible to shake off, but when Erik gathered Charles toward him and sank his teeth into the boy’s warm neck, the cry that Charles let out was completely unexpected and sobering.

“Fuck fuck _fuck_ Charles.” Erik moved away, chest heaving. He palmed the wall until he found the light switch and flicked it on, blinking. “Are you alright?”

Charles had a hand covering his neck, and he removed it instantly. “I’m fine.”

“Did that hurt?”

“No I - liked it, but, I didn’t mean to be so loud.” Charles tugged at his cardigan.

Frankly, they were lucky nobody was bursting into their room to make sure Charles was still alive. It might have been the fireworks outside, or the fact that the late night meant the staff were deep asleep, but otherwise—

“Charles…” Erik pushed his hair back and sighed. “We have to stop.”

Charles’s brows knitted together as he walked straight into Erik, planting kisses all over the haphazard places he could reach, whispering, “No no no no no please, Erik, _please_.” He was up on his toes trying to reach Erik’s face, but he had his chin up, and all Charles could get to was the top of his turtleneck.

“Fuck. _Stop_.” He held Charles back by his shoulders.

“Why are you doing this again?” Charles pleaded, stomping his foot, and - there it was. The shocking reminder that Charles was just a seventeen year old boy who had the idea of being deflowered by Erik implanted into his drunken mind by a complete stranger and if he was capable of any good, he would tell Charles this.

When he did, Charles struggled against him even more.

“Erik what _harm_ will it do if you just took me and fucked me—”

“Shh!” Erik cupped his palm over the boy’s mouth. “You’re so loud and you don’t even realise it.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ll be quiet. Really really quiet.”

Not if he was drunk, he wouldn’t be. Erik nodded as though he believed Charles and guided him over to the bed, where he sat down and pulled the boy to sit opposite him.

“Will you listen to what I have to say?”

“Can I sit in your lap while you speak?”

Gott, Charles didn’t even know if he liked cock, all he knew was that he liked Erik, and he didn’t know Erik at all.

“No way.”

Charles frowned.

“How old are you again?” Erik asked. Charles folded his arms.

“Age of consent.”

Erik repeated the question.

“Seventeen. Eighteen in three—”

“Okay. Thank you. But Charles that makes you a minor and makes me feel like a paedophile.”

Charles didn’t say a word.

“I know we could be quiet and careful but I won’t be able to live with myself if we did something.”

Right, because he was a diligent abider of the law.

“And that’s not even the only thing.”

Charles sighed and pulled his legs up onto the bed.

“My job, as your bodyguard,” he said, his stomach in knots, “is to protect you. That’s what I’m here to do and that’s what I _want_ to do. And that’s what your father wanted for you. Right?”

Charles raised his brows and shrugged.

“Sure,” he said, then brought his knees up to his chin.

They were silent, Erik nodding, when Charles began to smirk.

“So… in three week’s time… when I’ll turn eighteen and your contract will have finished… will you find another excuse? Or will you let me do as I please?”

Erik swallowed. He got up onto his feet and headed slowly towards the door.

“I guess we’ll find out.”

Charles didn’t stop him from leaving and going to his own room that night, but there was no relief to be had—not even when he jerked off inside the en suite bathroom, tap water running, while he deliberately didn’t think about all of the things that they could’ve done tonight.


	8. Chapter 8

Charles was to resume college in a few days.

They hadn’t spoken in a while, not since the year ended, apart from their customary greetings and chess games. The moment Erik realised they were too close or that Charles had lips and that he had a cock, he would have to excuse himself and let the boy continue with his final pieces of school work.

The week went by somehow, and soon it was the night before Charles’s first day back.

Erik had found him sleeping on his study table earlier that day, and the urge to kiss his sore neck had been strong enough to hurt, but he’d simply smiled at Charles and told him to go sleep in his bedroom.

Now Erik was trying to get some sleep of his own, but Charles was padding into his room and slipping under his blanket.

“I’m not a good person,” he said, when Charles’s arm came around his waist. Good people deserved this. He was not a good person.

“You are,” Charles mumbled, placing his chin on Erik’s shoulder.

“I’m not.”

“If you aren’t, then why are you still here?”

Erik frowned and turned around so that he could face Charles as he continued.

“I mean, you’re here, aren’t you? You’ve been taking better care of me than anyone else I know. You didn’t fuck off with the money I’ve given you the key to. You’ve driven me to sexual frustration because you’re trying to do the right thing by me. There aren’t a lot of people to compare you with, I admit, but you’re far from a bad person to me.”

Erik had no idea that he could even be _perceived_ as—never mind, he thought. What did Charles know about him? He turned his head away and huffed. This was even more ridiculous, because he was a bad person parading as a good person.

“If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine,” Charles said, rolling over so he was looking down at Erik from up on his elbows. His head bowed, slowly, then his lips started to run smoothly along Erik’s jaw. “I want to kiss you,” he whispered, “but then you’ll start getting a hard-on, and then you become grumpy.” Charles planted a noisy kiss on his cheek.

That couldn’t be argued, sadly. Erik had to groan and move his head away just to attest to that. Charles sighed, warm and breathily over his neck, then moved until he was sitting on top of Erik’s stomach, straddling him.

“Not even one kiss?”

Erik made an anguished appeal for mercy from the bottom of his throat, scrunching his face up tight as though someone had shone a bright light at it. That was a bit what Charles was like, he thought, whenever he crept into Erik’s dark bedroom.

“Charles you—” He bent his knees and thrust his hips up to try warding the boy off, but that wasn’t the best way to go about it. Charles giggled and readjusted himself so his back was braced by Erik’s thighs. “Is there no satisfying you?” Erik wondered, grabbing onto the boy’s furry socks.

“Of _course_ there is. I’ll just have to find someone else to snog.”

Erik cocked a brow, but otherwise tried to look unfazed.

“It’s a good thing I’ll finally be seeing Logan tomorrow.”

Erik held onto Charles’s ankles as though he could pin him there and prevent that from happening.

“Logan? You want to kiss Logan?”

Charles nodded in reply.

“You’re not kissing Logan,” he decided, voice strained.

“Why not? Is he a hazard to me? Will I be compromising my safety?” Charles said with bite.

“Yes. He… He looks like one of those people who have never bathed. Like those people who chop trees all day.”

Charles covered his mouth as he let out an airy laugh.

“It’ll be unsanitary for you, Charles. Unhygienic.”

“You’re being terrible! Logan is very capable of keeping clean, and I personally find his lumberjack look sexy.”

Erik didn’t comment, just snaked his hands up under Charles’s pant legs and smoothed his palms along the tight skin of the boy’s calves. Charles had gone silent, hardly even breathing, and now Erik’s fingers were ghosting past his knees and cramming their way up higher to find the flesh of his thighs—

“Charles!”

“Oh dear God that’s Geoffrey!” Charles said in alarm, climbing off of Erik and scrambling from the bed. Erik immediately followed when he realised that _Geoffrey_ was the butler calling after him. The boy began to shout back, “Yes I’ll be with you in—”

Erik slapped his hand over Charles’s mouth. “You’re in _my_ room,” he muttered.

Charles went stiff.

“Charles?” The butler’s voice travelled closer, from the boy’s room to his own. “Whatever are you doing in… Mr Lehnsherr’s room?”

They both stared at the door in horror. They didn’t even have any _light_ on, and that was apparent to anyone standing outside.

Charles bravely pulled Erik’s hand away to speak. “I was going to pull a prank on him while he was asleep.”

Erik sighed with relief.

“But never mind… he’s awake now.”

“Charles Francis Xavier. Grow up, will you? Leave the man alone!”

“Er… what’s going on?” Erik carefully supplied.

“You apologise to Mr Lehnsherr and then come downstairs, there’s a lawyer holding the line and he needs to speak to you.” Then the butler began to leave, muttering about how childish Charles could be.

Charles sagged against Erik, releasing his breath in a rush. “Close.”

This was why he couldn’t have the boy coming into his room whenever he fancied, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find the will to reprimand Charles when he was this positive ball of energy in Erik’s arms cheekily reaching up to peck his jaw before scampering away after his butler and leaving Erik feeling like he had their next interaction to look forward to.

\---

Charles being Charles insisted they walk to college the next day. Through the snowcapped forest.

And Erik, being someone he entirely wasn’t sure of, agreed, because getting to spend time alone with Charles in the open air meant that he could steal indulging glances of his pink cheeks and bright morning eyes and that pleased a part of him he didn’t know existed.

By now the only thing he was sure of was that leaving Charles was going to be a million times harder. He didn’t want to begin thinking about why.

“You know I’ve actually missed college,” Charles said wistfully, trudging through the snow. Erik had been adamant about holding the boy’s book bag so that he could walk freely. “Feels like my brain hasn’t been stimulated enough.”

“I didn’t realise I was such dull company,” Erik scoffed. “I should have known daily games of chess and piles of coursework weren’t enough for your big brain to consume.”

Charles playfully knocked their elbows together. “See? You say you’re just my bodyguard but you actually care about being good enough company for me. And you say you’re not a good person.”

Erik shook his head and looked away.

Charles linked their arms together and grinned, their steps falling into rhythm.

As the school became closer, Erik was quickly concluding that in order to compensate for Charles’s absence for the next few hours, he was willing to let the boy close to his flank, inside his arm, head against Erik’s shoulder.

“Are you really going to kiss Logan?” Erik asked as casually as possible.

Charles pushed his front hair back and looked up at him. “I’d be crazy not to. He’s always had nothing but respect for me, even though he _is_ infamously outspoken. And I know he wouldn’t be opposed to a kiss from me.”

Erik suddenly recalled the way Logan looked the night of the party, with his chest hair spilling out of his shirt and his staggeringly overconfident gait as he dared Erik to comment on his debauched state with those darkly piercing eyes. He imagined having to deal with that sight as Logan left Charles’s bedroom at the mansion on a rainy early morning and there was absolutely nothing quite like the surge of jealousy he felt setting his blood ablaze.

“Oh,” Erik said dryly. He could feel the arm that was slung around Charles starting to retreat and go back to his side. If Charles felt so strongly about Logan then he might as well go ahead and proposition him already - it would certainly make Erik’s imminent leave much more easier if Charles was being healthily fucked by the lumberjack - but _Logan_ most probably couldn’t satisfy Charles as well as Erik could’ve, and he certainly wouldn’t be able to have very stimulating chess games with Charles, and he’d probably never shaved a single day in his life so he probably couldn’t show him how to do that, the way Erik had, so gently, and Logan—

“Erik. Calm down. I won’t kiss Logan. I promise. Now _breathe_.”

Shit, he’d—said that aloud, and Charles had—heard that.

“I… I don’t know why I care so much about who you kiss, Charles,” he confessed, watching the boy’s expression flicker from surprised to openly understanding. “I shouldn’t.”

Charles’s face lit up with a brief smile. He placed his partially gloved hand inside Erik’s.

“I like that you care, Erik. Trust me. I do.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Erik started to give more thought to what it might be to love Charles, if he was to say, hypothetically, be at the opposite end of that love, and considered how much of his love he would actually be giving and how much of it Charles would suck right out of him.

\---

Erik had suddenly become an avid reader of the daily newspaper. He swore to himself that he’d stop caring the moment any news regarding the Marko’s capture was released, but since that didn’t seem to be happening any time soon, he resigned to caring.

It was exhausting.

Charles had made it his routine to demand a goodnight kiss from Erik, and sometimes he’d openly ask for one before he went to class, pointing to his cheek with his finger until Erik would succumb. And on one occasion Charles had barely needed to begin persuading Erik before he was leaning down to smack his lips sharp onto the boy’s cheekbone.

Charles had been sent off to class with a toothy smile, his feet walking backwards from toe to heel as he faced Erik the whole time.

“Watch where you’re going,” Erik yelled, concerned.

“I am,” Charles shouted back, his eyes still locked on Erik’s.

\---

It was going to be a hard day. Charles was in one of _those_ moods, the kinds where everything he didn’t want to hear sailed over his head, and the moment Erik touched him, he’d click back into focus.

“So how about—” Charles turned around and positioned himself to face the wall, then gestured at Erik to come closer to him. Then closer. “ _Closer_.”

Erik sighed and shifted forward until his hips were pressing against Charles’s. Ah, and there was the perfect shape of his arse, and now Erik had to try really hard not to get an erection while they were in the gym, meant to be working on self-defence.

Well, they had been, but then Charles became bored and decided he wanted Erik to pin him to the wall.

“Now, grab me or something. You don’t want me escaping.”

Erik rolled his eyes and gently bent the boy’s arms against his back as he rested his cheek against the wall, mouth gaping as though he was gasping with delight.

“There,” Erik ground out. “Demonstrate your best way of getting out of this position.”

“What makes you think I want to get out of this position?”

Charles smirked at himself.

Erik let go and stepped backwards, frowning with irritation.

“Is this a joke to you? Is it _amusing_ to you? Do you have any idea—”

Charles turned around with a flair of mischievousness, fingers pressed delicately to his mouth as he suppressed his smile and feigned a look of concentration.

“You think it’s a joke. You’re not taking this seriously at all, are you?”

The boy shook his head, wide-eyed, as though Erik’s allegation was entirely out of bounds. So they hadn’t done anything heated in a few days, nothing more than the odd kiss on the cheek before school, and now Charles had reached the point where his desire to have Erik feel him up was interrupting other more important matters, like this one.

Erik placed his hands on his hips.

“Charles you are an incredibly beautiful young man, do you know that?”

The boy blushed, ducking his head as he tugged on his shirtsleeves.

Erik took another step closer.

“And it takes me a lot of effort just to keep my hands off of you, do you understand that?”

Charles nodded, peering up at him with a soft smile.

“But it doesn’t matter, how goddamn beautiful or irresistible you are. You could be the most unpleasant looking creature to ever grace the earth,” Erik said, taking another step closer, “and there could still be some god-forsaken arsehole that would try and take advantage of you, for _whatever_ reason, forget your beauty or your wealth, and what would you do then? Hm? I’ll tell you: You’d be wishing you’d listened to me when I was helping you deal with those situations. How to kick harder and where to punch best, just in case you ever have to face it alone. You shouldn’t have to, believe me - and if I could I would spend every next moment of my life making _sure_ you shouldn’t have to - but will it _hurt_ you to pay attention to me right now?”

And that was how he managed to deal with his horny teenager.

He felt proud of himself.

There was not a single complaint to be had of Charles for the rest of the day.

\---

Logan was swaggering down the corridor with his arm slung over Charles’s shoulders.

Erik rolled up his sleeves.

They met each other halfway, Charles offering Erik a small wave in return for a silent nod. Logan gave Erik a lazy two-fingered salute before rolling his gaze away, back to Charles.

He could tell Logan was equally thrilled to see him. That was to say, not at all.

“How was your day?” Erik asked quickly, making a move for Charles’s bag.

“Good,” the boy replied, dodging Erik’s hands. “I can carry it myself, you know.”

Logan cocked a brow. “You almost fooled me into thinkin’ you’ve been hired just to carry his shit around.”

Erik pulled in a deep breath, nostrils flaring, but then Charles rested a hand on his puffed out chest. He gave him a gentle pat.

“Erik’s just trying to be nice. He gets nervous when we walk through the snow while I’m carrying a big load.”

“And Charles usually lets me,” Erik muttered lowly, scratching his ear and turning away as though he hadn’t said anything.

“Well, he musta been feelin’ strong today,” Logan grinned, elbowing Charles in the side. “He _almost_ beat me in an arm wrestle.”

“That is true,” Charles declared, lifting his arm so that he could flex his muscles. Logan looked on as though he was thoroughly impressed, even giving Charles’s bicep a squeeze.

“Hey I can feel a li’l somethin’ there. You been workin’ out?”

Charles blushed—not as much as he did when _Erik_ complimented him—and gave a tiny little shrug before looking up at Erik.

“Actually Erik and I have been practising some hand-to-hand combat. He’s been helping me get better at defending myself. That kind of thing. It’s pretty rigorous.”

Logan nodded his head and folded his arms in front of his chest. Erik knew well enough that that was just a way to draw attention to his chunky lumberjack arms, and Charles was indeed looking, and Erik was burning.

“If you think you’re any good,” Logan said, although it sounded more like _if Erik’s been teaching you any well_ , “I could come over, maybe, and we could have a friendly tussle. See how well you fare. Could be kinda nice?”

“Certainly,” Erik answered, snow crunching under his boots as he stepped towards Logan. “If we ever need a dummy, we’ll be sure to let you know.” He turned around to meet Charles’s gaze before nodding towards the forest. “Shall we?”

He led the way, not even waiting for the boy. Charles was probably going to thank him, later on, for saving him from having to give an answer to that strange proposition.

Because, really: _friendly tussle_?

Needless to say, Erik was surprised when Charles smacked him on the arm and refused to speak to him for the rest of their journey home.

\---

Cohering to the ease of Charles’s everyday routine had him feeling beyond relaxed. Repetition had never been this sweet to him - but considering the last two consistent things in his life had been the desire to kill, and then his dull grey prison cell, that wasn’t a difficult statement to make.

Besides, nothing about Charles _wasn’t_ sweet.

Oh, and he groaned at the thought, turning his head to press the tip of his nose to Charles’s head. He felt the boy move, his leg wrapping around Erik’s as he shifted onto his side with a sigh.  

And Erik was hard.

“Fuck my life,” he muttered. It wasn’t the first time, but they weren’t _usually_ this intertwined, with Charles’s entire anatomy wound around Erik’s, leaving him without much leeway for rolling over. His crotch had Charles practically sitting over it, quite snugly, too, and it stressed him out just to think about how that felt. “Charles…” he whispered, even as it occurred to him that if he wanted to extricate himself from the boy, he’d have to interrupt his sleep.

Charles stirred, stroking the arm that Erik had placed around his waist.

“Bärchen…” He sighed, scooting his hips backwards. Just this alone felt like he was violating Charles’s sleeping body. “Wake up. Get off me.”

Charles bumped his shoulder into Erik’s chin as he began to flip over, and—

His blue eyes snapped open.

“Oh… wow.”

Erik felt his cheeks burn red as he retreated to the other side of the bed, pulling the blanket up and off, the weight between his legs frankly mortifying. Charles was watching, and he probably understood the fact that it was _natural_ just as well, but the thought didn’t exactly make the situation any less awkward.

“Sorry about that.” He started to climb off the bed.

“Wait,” Charles said, the headboard knocking into the wall as he moved. Closer to Erik. “Are you, uh, fully erect?”

“Am I _fully erect_? Charles I am hard as a fucking rock.”

“Can I see?”

“I am in no mood to satisfy your scientific curiosity you _know_ I get grumpy when I’m aroused, and this, I didn’t ask for. Look at your own fucking cock.”

Charles pulled on the hem of Erik’s shirt. “I just want to see what it looks like. How… big it is?”

When Erik didn’t immediately answer, Charles moved to switch the lamp on so there was better light.

“I promise I won’t say or do anything. I promise.” Charles pursed his lips and moved up on his knees as he tucked his hands behind his back.

Erik scratched his stubble and shook his head. “Charles, I don’t think anyone’s cock has the power to make you do that.”

The boy shot him a sour look.

It was _true_ , though. Charles couldn’t function very long without saying and doing something or the other, asking a question or reaching to touch Erik’s face or arms or…

“Just - alright, I can’t make you any promises, but one look won’t cause anyone any harm. Unless…” Charles looked down at the bed sheets, chewing on his bottom lip. He narrowed his eyes. “Unless it’s really really small. Then—”

Erik had gritted his teeth so hard he could feel the ache in his gums. He huffed through his nose and swung his legs onto the bed, sitting up against the pillows.

“This is just to prove a point.”

He would most likely regret this later on in the morning.

Charles had the audacity to look so goddamn _pleased_ with himself.

Erik untied the drawstrings of his bottoms, every touch from his fingers too close to his cock making his chest tighten. He had to control himself. It wasn’t a striptease. He wasn’t trying to get himself off.

Without much more preamble, then, and without looking at Charles, he pulled the waistband down his hips, just below his balls, and let his stiff hard-on spring out into full height. It was curving towards his stomach, and perhaps one stroke would set it nice and firm, but he resisted; he placed both hands on the bedspread.

“Bloody hell.”

“What?” Erik asked.

Charles’s eyes were a little too wide as they skated up and down his length, and for an asset that had always earned Erik the most praise, he felt awfully self-conscious about it.

“How the… h- _how_ is that meant to ever fit inside my arse? It’s the size of my arm!”

Erik tipped his head back and sighed.

“Here I was thinking I could do it just because I can fit three fingers inside myself but—what—how? Has anyone ever given you a blowjob? Have they ever lived to tell the story?!”

“Big mistake,” Erik mumbled to himself, tucking his cock away, even though it still made for a significant bulge. What was he thinking anyway? That he’d show his horny teenager his sizeable cock, and they’d both nod and go back to sleep?

“Erik I’m _kidding_.” Charles moved closer to him and wrapped his arms around Erik’s neck. “It’s a masterpiece.” He nibbled at Erik’s earlobe, grazing it with his teeth and tongue. “It’s big and thick and it’s making my thighs tremble, just to think about it inside me…” He moved his head back and raised his brows. “ _And_ it reminded me that you’re Jewish.”

Erik pulled Charles’s face towards him. “I wish I could know how your brain works.”

“Oh I bet you want to know about my brain,” Charles breathed into his ear, his voice as low and sultry as it could possibly get. When Erik’s eyes darted to the side and took him in, the boy was leisurely dragging the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip, then back the other way, watching Erik as he watched him.

“You are the filthiest…”

There were no words.

“I would do it, you know.”

Erik blinked and swallowed. And slowly turned his head away. Charles wouldn’t… Erik didn’t expect anything of that sort from Charles, especially given the boy’s inexperience, but there was no way he didn’t know what his lips did to grown men.

Charles started to kiss a trail from below Erik’s ear to his cheekbone, each press of his lips hard and affectionate. He reached Erik’s mouth and pulled his lips away just in time to make a noise of disagreement.

“Ergh, morning breath.” He pulled his lips into a grimace.

Erik pulled Charles back towards him on a whim. “I don’t mind,” he said, and proceeded to part Charles’s lips with the point of his tongue, and about fifty seconds in, neither of them minded it.

He rolled Charles over onto his back on the bed and pressed one more deep kiss to his perfect lips before cupping his bulge and climbing over to the other side and off the bed, then towards the bathroom.

Charles remained on his back with his arms spread out, a delighted and slightly flustered grin on his face as he watched Erik leave.

\---

It had only been halfway into Charles’s two-hour tutorial in the labs when he decided to take a stroll towards the forest. He knew he’d be back by the time Charles finished, glancing at the time on his phone’s display before he set off.

The breeze that had been rattling the tree branches was now whipping leaves off and onto the ground, a force that had picked up dirt as it whirled around him and whistled at his ears.

It made Charles’s sudden arrival behind him all the more shocking—the boy’s arms had enveloped his waist so suddenly he jerked in alarm, immediately moving to tug those arms off and turn around.

“Charles—what do you think you’re doing?” He cast a look around them and released a long breath.

“We were dismissed early,” Charles explained, fussing with his hair to keep it away from his face. “I thought you might be wandering about here, so I—”

“Why did you have to come here by yourself? Charles you could’ve waited for me, not come here on your own!”

Charles’s smile began to fade into a baffled expression.

“Why are you yelling at me? It was barely a two minute walk from there,  and I wasn’t going to stand around and wait for a whole hour.”

“You _know_ you’re supposed to stay in the school premises if I’m not around you, we’ve been over that. What if I wasn’t here and someone found you and—Goddammit, Charles, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that I didn’t need your permission,” Charles said defiantly, “just to walk around the corner.”

“It’s not about my permission it’s about your safety! I wasn’t there to make sure you were _safe_.”

Charles actually scoffed. He folded and unfolded his arms, then took a step towards Erik.

“If you really cared so much about my safety you wouldn’t be fucking off to someone else in a week’s time, would you. It’s not like you’ll be here to keep me safe then!”

Erik took a moment to comprehend what Charles had inferred by _someone else_ , and by then the boy’s eyes had gone hard, his lips had thinned.

It wasn’t fair that Charles had to feel this way. He’d gone from thinking Erik’s presence was excessive to being unsettled by the _thought_ of Erik moving on to a different person’s duty.

Even if he was, it’s not as if they’d ever share the bond he had with Charles.

But dammit he was leaving in a week. A _week_.

Having had his eyes shut for a while, he opened them to see Charles’s face inches from his, looking lost and upset and slightly hopeless.

“You need to know that…” his voice was nothing more than a hoarse whisper. He cleared his throat. “Charles you have to know that it’s not… It’s not in my power to stay. Leaving you will be—”

Painstaking.

“... Difficult. But I _know_ I won’t have to be worried about your safety if you make me a promise.” He grabbed Charles’s shoulders and lowered his head so that their gaze was level. “When you inherit your family money you need to promise me you will invest in hiring the most qualified people in the profession, _only_ the best, no matter what the cost, to be at your beck and call for as long as necessary. They should make your life more precious than their own, do you understand me? Is that a promise?”

Charles shook his head.

Erik dropped his shoulders. He leaned forward until his forehead rested against Charles’s, then he straightened, running his hands down the boy’s arms.

“You tell me, Erik. Tell me how much I have to pay to make you stay here.”

Erik opened his mouth to protest, but Charles didn’t let him get his turn.

“You know I can afford any price you say. How much is Aunt Emma paying you? Or how much are you due? Whatever it is, I can match that and multiply it by any number you can think of. I don’t care if I have to buy your love I need you t—”

“My love?” Erik cut in, brows furrowing. He felt his heart jump at the word, as though it was frightened. “My _love_?”

He wasn’t even _capable_ of love.

Charles was pink-cheeked and messy-haired and the integrity in his voice was both endearing and terrifying.

“Yes, Erik, your love.”

Erik let out a mirthless peal of laughter. Charles blinked at him as though his reaction hadn’t come as a surprise to him—the boy simply continued to look self-assured and wide-eyed.

“There is no such thing as _my love_. I’m sorry Charles, but you’re getting the wrong idea about how I feel about you.”

Charles smiled at him, peaceful and soft, blinking slowly. “You’re really going to deny it, then?”

Erik clenched his fist, then relaxed it. Nothing existed for him to be denying, as Charles had put.

If he was a man in love, he would know it. There would be every indication. He would be so extremely aware of it that every time he looked at Charles, he would hear alarm bells ringing.

He was sure of it.

Otherwise, how else did people know they were in love?

“That’s enough of this. Let’s go.”

He turned on his heel and loped deeper into the forest, making sure he could hear every thunk of Charles’s footsteps following behind him.

They hardly exchanged words for the rest of the day.

Erik couldn’t help feeling off-balance, like someone had meddled with his composure, taken a part of him that had always been there and put it somewhere else.

But there was probably a very logical reason for that.

Nonetheless, he couldn’t find the energy to take him down to the gym or even face Charles for a game of chess. Just having dinner in the boy’s vicinity had him feeling knackered - he’d had to pour all of his concentration into making sure he couldn’t, in any possible way, be perceived as being in _love_.

And for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why that was taking so much conscious effort.

Still, he ended up preparing for bed feeling like he’d just contaminated the one sweet thing in his life with his own bitterness.

\---

He acted as though he was completely oblivious to the sound of his door creaking open.

It was foolish, because Charles knew that Erik’s instincts were too sharp to have let him sleep on while his room was being intruded, and he would only remain silent if he knew who was entering.

So Charles knew that Erik knew that he had just made his way inside on quiet, furry tip-toes, and that he was the one landing on his bed and throwing an arm around Erik’s waist.

“Erik… I know you’re awake.”

As a way of acknowledgement, he sighed.

“Can we please just pretend nothing happened and go back to the way we were this morning?”

Erik suddenly, and quite desperately, felt like he needed to put distance between himself and Charles. The boy was going to bemoan his loss and feel abandoned and alone - and that wouldn’t have been the case if they hadn’t let each other get close enough to be affected by one another. Some space to breathe, some distance, even just the rest of the week to let them get each other out of their systems - it would go a long, long way. It would _help_.

But that didn’t explain why Erik ended up muttering, “Okay,” and brought his arm around Charles so that he could tuck him against his side.

\---

Erik bounded down the stairs and headed into the kitchen for breakfast. Charles was taking a shower, and so wouldn’t be down for another thirty minutes, leaving Erik with enough time to check the newspaper.

Today, however, he came in to find the butler already leafing through it at the table, a large saucepan boiling away behind him on the hob, next to a timer.

“Morning,” Erik greeted, folding into his usual seat. He drummed his fingers against the table, eyes scanning the front page.

“Ah, a very good morning to you too,” the man returned jovially, closing the paper and setting it aside. “Before you start perusing through that monstrosity, allow me to save you the trouble and inform you that there isn’t a drop of news on either of the Marko’s.”

Erik withdrew his hand and placed it on his forearm. “I see.” He stood up and fetched himself a glass of water. “Well that certainly does cut my morning short.” He nodded at the butler genially and downed the glass.

The man—and Erik felt strange to think of him as being _Geoffrey_ , but all the same—gave him a look of understanding. Like he knew exactly how important any matter concerning the Marko’s was to him.

“I’m still not sure I understand how an investigation that’s now involved the CIA hasn’t managed to find its way here. Wouldn’t they be wanting to question Charles, or even you? Don’t get me wrong,” he said lowly, “I’m grateful they’ve left him out of the case, but I can’t help being curious about _why_.”

The butler stood up with a wince and turned the timer off, stirring the pot.

“You have me to thank for that,” he said proudly. “I took every measure necessary to ensure they left master Xavier well alone, stressing that he wasn’t going to be any help in the first place, and that he’d been through enough as it is. They simply _weren’t_ going to ruin what’s left of his childhood by reminding him of what that wretched ogre did to his parents. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

Erik felt a pang in his chest. The memory of Charles in his study on Christmas night, sodden with tears, laying the blame on himself—there was a version of Erik that might have told Charles to suck it up and _do_ something, get out of the mansion and actually help bring his father’s killer to justice instead of moping about it with a bottle of alcohol.

That version ceased to exist.

He could only find it in himself to feel glad for what the butler had strived to preserve. It meant Charles could focus on his education, and that, at the end of it all, was his tool. His knowledge really was his power.

He wasn’t like Erik; he didn’t have hands capable of inflicting pain and death, even on those who deserved it the most.

He was perfect just the way he was, and Erik had accepted that.

“This is… with no relevance to what you just said,” Erik began, returning to his chair and looking down at his hands. “But I’ve been wanting to seek out the answer to a question you might have.”

The butler’s expression hardly changed as he looked over at both doors, the one leading from the foyer and the other that gave passage to the gardens, and he nodded his permission.

“How does someone know if they’re in love?” he articulated, raising his head minutely to see if the butler had reacted.

He was subtly tamping down on a smile.

“My, my, Mr Lehnsherr. You look awfully drab for someone who’s smitten.”

Erik lifted his head. “How does anyone know if they’re smitten? How can you be able to... ” He waved his hands through the air. “How is… What are the signs?”

The man chuckled, turning the gas off and joining Erik at the table.

“Maybe I can help, hm?”

Erik nodded a little too eagerly.

“Well, I’ve always thought that the best way to know how you truly feel about someone is whether or not you, given a choice, would take up all of their pain.”

Erik frowned. “Their pain?”

The butler leaned forward. “Imagine all of their pain—which shouldn’t be too hard for you to do if you really did have feelings for them—and now, suppose you had to burden all of it. Would you?”

“I would - but only because I could handle it bet—”

“It doesn’t matter why,” the butler said, shaking his head. “Just that you would. It’s no small thing, taking on someone else’s suffering. That’s what you would endure for this person of yours.”

Erik swallowed. “I would’ve done the same for my parents, too.”

“Then you must have loved your parents very much.”

“But it’s…” He paused. “What I’d do for them doesn’t have to mean that I’m in love with them.”

The man lifted and dropped his shoulder. Then he leaned back into his chair.

“You’re awfully adamant. I was like that, at some point, but then I realised life was too bloody short for me to be in denial about how much I wanted to be with someone. The closer I get to death, the more I wish I’d admitted to it sooner.” He batted his hand through the air. “Oh, how typical of me. The old man talks about his life and his death.”

Erik gave him a faint smile. “It’s insightful.”

“Tell you what - you’re a hardworking man, and the way you commit to your responsibilities has always had my admiration. You don’t just protect Charles when you’re awake, you do it when you’re asleep! Always on high-alert, gun at the ready, enough to even make _me_ feel like a criminal. Charles has always had nice things to say about you, and how you put his life before your own is a wonderful example of how much you care about what you do for a living. But I believe that you would show your love in the same way, Mr Lehnsherr. If it wasn’t your job to protect Charles, and if Charles was that person that you care for - do you see yourself doing the same for them? Putting your life on the line by instinct?”

Erik was stunned.

He slowly got up from his chair and stood to his feet.

“I’m assuming you’ve found your answer,” the butler was saying, over the ringing in his ears.

Not quite alarm bells, but—

“Mein… _Gott_. I need to…”

He turned towards the door and paced up to it, hands fisted at his sides, and almost felt his heart burst of overload when he bumped right into Charles.

“Oh! Erik,” he said cheerfully, steadying himself against Erik’s arm. “You gave me a fright. Have you had breakfast already?”

Erik looked at him for one long second before moving Charles to the side by his shoulders.

“Where are you off to?” he called, but Erik had already started to retreat. “Why is he off in such a hurry?”

“Charles, let him get to where he must. Mr Lehnsherr has just had the brilliant realisation that he’s in _love_.”

\---

They walked through the forest in complete silence.

Charles hadn’t said much at all today, and he hadn’t even tried to argue with Erik about how he could carry his own books.

He quietly let Erik haul his bag over his shoulder and off they went.

Charles was probably going crazy. His urge to speak or ask a question was undoubtedly driving him insane by now, but he hadn’t made it obvious at all. He looked rather content, warm in his thick coat and those stupidly pointless fingerless gloves.

And Erik felt something like so much love.


	9. Chapter 9

The elephant in the room was a gigantic beastly thing that wasn’t leaving space for much else.

Just yesterday, he’d been grateful for Charles’s silence on the matter, but now—he was despairing, hanging onto every movement of the boy’s lips, waiting for words to be said.

Words like, _I love you too_. But how was that going to help?

What if the next time he spoke, it was, _May I have that key back?_

They were an hour into their chess game and Charles had taken most of his pieces. His hands were perched around a steaming mug of tea, and his legs were crossed in front of him with bits of his furry socks sticking out from under his knees.

“I give up,” Erik groused, knocking his own queen down. “There’s nothing I can do. You’ve won.”

Charles scowled, unfolding his legs. “I’m nowhere near winning!” He propped Erik’s queen back up. “You’re good at getting yourself out of check. Come on. You have a few options.”

Erik rubbed his forehead. “I don’t see anything I can do.”

Charles sighed, then finished off his tea before setting the mug down on the table. When he stood up, Erik’s vision narrowed down to the steps that Charles took to bring him towards the other side of the chessboard, where Erik was sat.

He hummed, looking behind him at the placement of Erik’s legs, and lowered himself down onto his thighs.

Then he leaned forward and began talking through the defensive options Erik had, and the one risky counter attack move he had left.  

Erik barely listened, his face turned towards Charles in his lap. He placed his hand on the boy’s knee and moved it up the inside of his thigh, giving it a squeeze—then quickly moved to bury his face into Charles’s neck before he could be caught out for having discernible lust in his eyes.

“Erik…” Charles breathed, extending his neck by tipping his head sidewards. “Not in my study. I’d never be able to… study.”

There was honest agreement and understanding in Erik’s low hum, but no such determination to stop in his hands and mouth. Charles’s skin was too appealing, and to think he’d only seen it and felt it and tasted it up to his neck…

“Mmmh. Get away from me,” Erik mumbled, gently prying Charles off of his lap.

“So polite,” he commented, obliging. “Will you be joining me in my bed, or should I go and make myself comfortable in yours?”

Erik rested his head on the back of the chair, a lazy smile on his lips. “Yours.”

Charles nodded and smiled back disarmingly. “Mine.”

\---

Erik had spent his morning with Charles bundled in his arms, his afternoon with Charles’s hand clutching his as they walked through the forest, and the evening inside his walk-in closet, wondering what to pack his things in.

Frost had probably already made arrangements for him. He ought to give her a call and check in.

He would have to find a job. He’d have to make himself desirable to some employer who needed him desperately enough to disregard his criminal record.

A new identity, then, perhaps.

He heaved a sigh. He was shattered by the thought—spoilt as he was by this house, his treatment and accommodation in it.

He wasn’t even going to think about Charles.

Charles was two months of his life he would have to cast out of his mind and move on from.

He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes and then passed them over his face. Right, he had to decide what to do about his things.

He hadn’t come with much at all. It would feel wrong to take the clothes and items they’d provided him with here, even if the sweats and night clothes had fit him quite well. The shoes he came in weren’t going to last him through the snow, though.

And yet all of this was trivial to him. It didn’t matter to him that he didn’t have sufficient outerwear. He felt angry and disappointed in himself because he had been more ready to succumb to prison than he was to leave this house, and that was only due to knowing that he wasn’t leaving anything behind.

Now he felt like with the mansion he was leaving that version of himself that Charles deemed to be a good person, and that, perhaps, hurt the most.

\---

“I hope Charles has stopped pulling pranks and started behaving himself,” the butler said admonishingly as he set the table for breakfast.

As much as it was a comment thrown in Charles’s direction, Erik felt as though his reply was being expected. He settled into a chair.

Nodding, he said, “Yes, he’s… perfect.”

Charles glanced at him from across the table, lifting his eyebrows.

“—ly well behaved,” he added.

“Well it’s about time. Charles will be eighteen tomorrow.”

“That’s right.” He peered up at Erik again. “No longer a child, but an adult.”

He wasn’t going to wake up looking any different tomorrow—no less boyish and youthful than he already was. It wasn’t going to make the difference between their ages smaller, and it wasn’t going to make it any less wrong.

When Erik ended up in Charles’s bedroom that night, told to close his eyes and stay sitting down, he did exactly that.

Then the door of the en suite opened, and shut. Charles was inside the bedroom with him, walking over to him, and Erik sat back on his hands, waiting for the next instruction.  

For what seemed like twenty minutes, nothing happened.

The owl clock kept ticking on. Erik could hear Charles breathing in front of him, and he started to worry if second thoughts were being had.

Certainly, he would agree to whatever Charles wanted and didn’t want. If he wanted to stop, then guaranteed, Erik would stop. If Charles was feeling suddenly self-conscious, then that was _heartbreaking_ , and Erik would shatter any mirror that allowed Charles to feel that way, compelling him only to know how he looked by the compliments Erik had for him.

But that couldn’t have been why he was waiting, and the clock kept ticking—

“You’re waiting precisely for midnight,” Erik pointed out. He wanted to touch Charles so badly that the skin of his hands was tingling.

“Shh,” Charles said, his fingers now pressed to Erik’s mouth. Erik kissed them hungrily, his eyes still closed, clutching the boy by his wrist and pulling him closer. He slipped his fingers to Charles’s pulse point and the kick of his rapid breathing was astonishingly pleasing, in an unearthly way.

Perhaps because he had it in his control for the past two months, and yet, it still existed.

He passed his hand up Charles’s arm, feeling the drag of silk cloth. He was in his dressing gown.

“Open your eyes.”

He was definitely in his dressing gown.

Erik felt his bottom lip part from his top lip as Charles sauntered closer to him, light catching the sheen of his robe in an elegant way.  He picked up the cloth from the lower half, where it fell over his legs, and bunched it up into his hands - halfway up his thighs, then moved forward to straddle Erik on the bed.

His arms came around Erik’s neck and suddenly he had gone from sensual and bold to shy and pink-cheeked, bowing his head to his chest as he wrapped himself around Erik.

There was a loose knot at his waist, and Charles bent a little so that Erik’s hands could fit through and undo it. Charles smelt so overwhelmingly like soapy bathing water, and the scent peaked when Erik pulled away the cloth of his robe and dragged it down his shoulders.

Charles’s mouth hung open a little, his breath coming out loud and ragged. Erik placed his thumb on Charles’s lip and swiped it downwards, down his chin, the arch of his throat and the lump of his Adam’s apple, then turned his hand so the back of his fingers caressed the skin of Charles’s chest.

“You don’t have to say anything, Erik,” he said nervously, gripping at Erik’s shoulders. “Just do whatever you want with me.”

Erik didn’t know what to make of it. Charles was nestled in his lap, glowingly pale with his taut, pink nipples and his doll-like skin, everything about him pretty as a picture, silk gathered at his waist. And he was asking Erik to do what he liked with him.

So he could, if wanted to, fuck him. Spread his legs open and be gentle about it, before all of his frustrations would rise and take over, forcing Charles to brace himself as he uncaringly took his pleasure. And then he would be gone tomorrow, and—

“Please please _please_ stop thinking so much just _do_ it,” Charles pleaded, clenching his thighs around Erik’s hips as he tried hauling his shirt off.

“Charles,” Erik said, stopping him from pulling at his shirt with his hands. “I don’t trust myself to—”

“Shut up,” Charles snapped, cupping Erik’s face and tilting his head at an angle so his lips were pressing hard and almost painfully against Erik’s. His teeth nipped Erik’s lips open and the length of his tongue went plunging into Erik’s mouth unapologetically, and this boy needed to stop—

Charles whimpered, halting.

Erik had frantically ridded the rest of the robe from around Charles’s hips and managed to wrap his fingers around his cock, stroking it slowly. The base of this thumb worked at rubbing along his shaft, and the pad of it pressed on his tip, toying with the swollen opening at his head and the tiny spurts of moisture dripping out.

Charles’s lips were slack against Erik’s. His nose was pressed to Erik’s face as his breath hitched and paused and came out in a long rush of warm air.

He continued to whimper like he’d never felt such a novel sensation coursing through his bones, and Erik was suddenly struck by the idea of something Charles had probably never even dreamed of feeling.

Decisive, Erik grabbed a hold of Charles’s hips and thighs, their weight so gloriously heavy even despite of how skinny Charles was, and flipped them over onto the bed. Charles was trapped underneath his body and bounced once onto the mattress, hands up at his ears.

He let Erik do with him, what he liked. He didn’t protest or question it when Erik slipped his hand under Charles’s back and encouraged him to turn onto his stomach—all he’d said was, “There’s stuff you can use in the top drawer. Left. No, right.”

Erik ignored it, simply running his lips down Charles’s spine. He wanted to bite, but he didn’t want to be loud. His cock was painfully trapped inside his trousers, and he felt something akin to guilt as he zipped himself open and pulled his cock out of his boxers.

Breathing hard, he bent over Charles’s body and licked his way back up to his ears and neck, rubbing his nose into hollow, sensitive spaces and glancing up at the mirror opposite them, where Charles’s eyes were trained on him.

“Oh… oh, Charles, you are far too beautiful.”

His fingers were reverently exploring backbones, sharp and yet round, then moved below for the change in skin texture as tight and hard became loose and soft, fleshier and more plump—as the dip of his back became the slope of his dimpled arse, then curved out into long thighs. Erik pulled Charles up by his hips until he was up on knees and elbows. He felt his cock brush the back of Charles’s thigh and he nearly lost all control over himself, all thoughts momentarily erratic. He wanted to push inside Charles so desperately it was almost irrational, to think he couldn’t restrain himself, but he had to. He breathed in and looked at the mirror, where Charles’s face was resting on his hands. His eyes were shut and his mouth was open. His hair was a mess and Erik wanted to know one goddamn thing about Charles that wasn’t sickeningly perfect to him.  

He started to massage the flesh of Charles’s arse, and that was when the noises began. Charles was wise enough to muffle his mouth immediately, just as Erik’s moved between his legs to hazard a lick at his balls, so enticingly large and pink.

“Nuhhh—No, what are you—where are you… putting your… ”

But Charles’s initial moan had been all the incentive he needed to continue, no matter where he was putting his mouth and no matter how scandalous it was. He lapped at the stretch of skin just behind his balls, and his neck was starting to hurt, Charles’s thighs shivering—so he moved out from between his legs and let the boy lay flat onto the bedspread.

Erik shut his eyes and jerked his cock a few times, gaze absorbed by the pink-tinged globes of Charles’s arse. He ducked again, this time to slowly roll his tongue over the crease of his rear, preparing himself for any involuntary thrusts from Charles.

“Would it offend you if I rimmed your perfect little arse? Is that too raunchy for you?”

Charles was inert, catching up with his breath against his hands, then he shook his head. His blush spread to his back.

Erik smirked as he closed his hand around his prick, just the thought of his horny teenager being robbed of words and dealing with a deep flush turning him on. Saliva pooled in his mouth when Charles wriggled his pert arse and he dived again, this time with his hands spreading out his cheeks. Even though Charles had never anticipated an act of this sort, he had thoroughly cleaned himself, leaving hardly any taste under his tongue as he laved his way inwards. Charles’s skin twitched under every other lick, sometimes out of the ricochet of pleasure, and sometimes from pure shock at what was happening. He rolled his tongue into a cylindrical sort of fashion that inserted delightfully into Charles’s hole, the small entrance that he’d probably only ever explored in passing, or those three fingers he’d once mentioned, but it could never have been like this.

Because, he shouted.

Erik shushed him immediately, hands on his flanks, palming up and down. Charles hoisted himself up on his knees and then positioned his quaking body against Erik’s, close enough that he could tip his head back onto Erik’s shoulder, and then wrap his hand around his cock.

There was a patch of dampness on the bed from where Charles had been laying, and when Erik looked up from it, he saw their reflection again. This time Charles’s kneeling naked body obscured most of his, his pale skin sweaty and delectable. His throat had never looked this long, what with his head rolled back next to Erik’s, and Erik ran his fingertips down it to elicit a shiver. Charles’s body was otherwise tense, his cock leaking onto his hand.

Erik’s cock was protruding from between Charles’s thighs, the length of his torso meaning his hips didn’t quite align with the boy’s. He brought his hand around Charles’s sweat-damp hip and swept it past his own cock in favour of Charles’s, his reward coming in the form of a desperate hand clawing at his shirt. His trousers were pooled at his knees, still, and his shirt was now clinging to his skin with the aid of perspiration.

“Are you going to try and be quiet for me?” he breathed into the boy’s ear.

Charles nodded, bringing his knees together and with that motion, trapping Erik’s cock between both thighs.

Erik groaned into Charles’s neck, breathing heavily—his hips began to work a grinding rhythm into the clamp of the boy’s strong thighs, the heat there sticky and wet. Gott, Charles had been…

His hand resumed at Charles’s cock and pumped him steadily, trying to match the rut of his hips to the movement of his wrist.

Charles held onto his arm and moaned, head falling forward. Erik brought his other hand to the boy’s chin and lifted it, whispering, “Look at yourself.”

Their eyes met in the mirror.

“Fuck… I… I need to… _ah_!”

Erik smothered Charles’s mouth with his hand and let the boy wrack out a guttural moan of pleasure. Erik’s own hips stuttered, and he insinuated his knee between Charles’s legs to part them again. He could get carried away, he thought mistily, and really bruise Charles.

But Charles made no indication of it. He started to come, bent over on the sheets with Erik’s hand steadying him at the hips. Jets of ejaculate came spurting out, Charles’s hand still shivering as he milked himself. The bed sheets were suitably tarnished, and Charles’s shock was equally palpable, as he looked at his mess before sliding onto the bed and laying down, calmed.

Erik looked at him in awe. His eyes flitted from the mirror to the real thing, both views astonishingly gripping, but neither of them as battering as the realisation that this was what he was going to leave.

He shut his eyes and swallowed, pretending this was all an illusion. He tugged on his cock and brought himself off as though this was all a fantasy, concocted on his own, and none of this had actually happened. He’d pictured it in his head to get off, hence why it felt so surreal as his orgasm shuddered through him and ended with a copious stain all over the sheets and his hands.

When he opened his eyes, it was slightly more difficult to convince himself that none of this had been real. The pain and the guilt was certainly real, and the ache in his legs was definitely not just in his head. He edged off the bed, carefully, and slipped his trousers off the rest of the way, along with his boxers. His shirt could stay on—it felt uncomfortable, but he didn’t have anything else left unpacked, other than tomorrow’s clothes.

He loped to the en suite, where the fragrance of soap was sharp, suds still dripping along the bathtub. Once he found a spare towel, he returned to where Charles laid and cleaned up the drying stains on the bed. He nervily swept the towel over Charles’s stomach—the boy was fast asleep on his side, his head nowhere near the pillows, but that was fine—then cautiously dabbed it inside his thighs, where the skin was undoubtedly tender and raw.

However, Charles was too blissed out to do more than moan and let Erik tuck a pillow under his head, then bring a separate blanket for them to sleep under.

He took advantage of the boy’s pliant sleepiness, pulling him towards his chest and wrapping an arm around his waist. Sleepy as he was, he would probably have to relish this for as long as possible, given that it would just be a memory the same time tomorrow.


	10. Chapter 10

The doorbell was chiming.

Erik was sitting in his meticulously cleaned out room when he heard it. He stalked towards the corridor and heard the butler’s merry tone.

“Ms Frost! What a pleasant surprise! How nice of you to come.”

He walked further, until his figure at the top of the stairs caught the eye of both Frost and the butler who were lingering in the foyer.

Frost looked uncharacteristically happy. There was sheer delight in her manner of talking and smiling and even in her aura; a fur stole hugged her shoulders and diamonds hung from her neck, ears and wrists as she sashayed towards the lounge, where she knew Erik would follow.

Genuine dread was welling up inside him.

He wanted to hate Frost. He wanted to transfer the blame on her—for everything he felt right now for the boy he’d left sleeping upstairs.

He wanted to blame her for imparting him with thoughts of murdering Charles, he wanted to blame her for making him steal from the house he was living in, but most of all, he just wanted to blame her. He wanted to hate her.

Erik charged inside, and the abrupt thudding noise didn’t even register to him until he heard Charles behind him.

“Aunt Emma?” Charles said, causing Erik to turn around.

Charles was in his dressing gown. It was secured properly around him, covering his modesty, but Erik’s heart still sank heavily at the memory of what he’d looked like in it last night. He watched the boy shut the door behind him and glance up coyly to meet his gaze.

“Hi,” he said to Erik.

“Hi,” Erik said back.

“I saw your room just now,” Charles said. “You’ve… packed.”

“I’m leaving.”

Charles shut his eyes and exhaled. He clenched his hands at his sides and started to make his way over to where Frost was sat on the rocking chair, observing them.

“Aunt Emma I have a proposition for you regarding Erik.”

The woman curved a brow, planting her feet so the chair stopped moving.

“You want him, to stay with you. Is that right?”

Charles nodded enthusiastically.

“Do you know _who_ he is?”

Erik’s head started to spin.

“Frost—”

“Oh, sweetheart, you have it all wrong. Nobody’s told you anything, have they? They haven’t told you what _I’ve_ done, and they haven’t told you why Erik is even here in the first place.” Frost stood from the chair and ambled towards her godson, stroking his chin with her fingers. “But I’m sure you’d like to know. Wouldn’t you?”

“He doesn’t need to know,” Erik quipped, trying to keep his voice a low growl, but it didn’t co-operate. “You will tell him all that you’re responsible for, but my past is mine to tell.”

“That doesn’t make for a very interesting story, though, does it? And Charles has always been awfully curious.”

Charles’s eyes searched him, befuddled. “So is anyone going to explain to me what I don’t know?”

Erik had to sit down. He had to—no, he had to leave. But—

Charles hadn’t taken his gaze away from him. He looked _scared_.

He had every right to be.

“I’m sorry, Charles,” Erik whispered, and he sat down on the couch, head in his hands.

“Why is he sorry?” Charles demanded, this time pointing the question at Frost, who shrugged.

“I don’t know. It’s not like anyone died. And that’s the best thing about all this, isn’t it just? Nobody had to die, and everybody got what they wanted.”

Erik’s heart had grown arms and legs and was beating against his chest, violently pounding to be choked out somehow.

“Who got what, exactly. This is starting to sound absurd. Can someone _tell me_ what the hell this is about?”

“You see, Charles, I do strive to be honest. I wasn’t going to sit back and let Erik take the blame for why there’s absolutely nothing in Daddy’s safe.” Frost then absently added, “May he rest in peace.”

Charles jerked backwards. He slowly turned to look at Erik, eyebrows drawn together. “How does she know? Erik, is it true?!”

“Good grief, Charles,” Frost intoned, a hand splayed at her chest. “I didn’t think you cared about a little bit of money. At least, not like some of us, materialistic fools who can’t have enough of it.”

Erik stood up and advanced towards her, riled.

“I’m glad you’re happy. I’m glad you’ve fixed your problems and paid your debts with the money you wanted from the Xavier household. But you have no right to be coming back here, talking to Charles like that, when you wanted him _dead_!”

Frost tilted her head to the side and clicked her tongue. “You just ruined the whole—forget it.” She turned to look at Charles. “Erik here is the reason you’re alive, Charles. Don’t be mad at him, okay? That money was _supposed_ to be _mine_. I only took what I was owed. The inheritance? All yours. See how everybody got what they wanted?”

Charles held his hands up in surrender. His face displayed a conflict of flickering emotions - shock, bemusement, disbelief, concern.

“I don’t understand,” Charles said calmly, “What the two of you are going on about. I really can’t even _begin_ to understand.” He looked at Frost with a shake of his head. “It’s true that I cared about that money. I cared about making sure it didn’t go to the wrong people. I cared about seeing if Erik was going to take the money and _leave_ the next day. I didn’t care about having it for myself.” Then he took a deep breath, and asked, “Is it really all gone?”

Frost turned on her heel and slowly returned to the chair, lowering herself into it with her knees together. “To answer your question: yes, it is gone. To put you out of your misery: it hasn’t gone to the _wrong people_ , since it’s gone to _me_ , and I’m your dear Aunt Emma aren’t I?” She batted her lashes with a saccharine smile.

The boy was just as unwilling to watch the sight, because as Erik turned to look at him, Charles was looking back.

He didn’t have to feel bad about this, Erik reminded himself. All he’d done was save Charles. Lied to him, kept up a facade, fell for him and made love to him—that was all he was guilty of.

He shook his head and looked away.

“I’m assuming neither of you knew about the money until I told him,” Charles said shakily, his gaze still a weight on Erik. “Was it planned from the beginning, then? Between the two of you? Is that the reason you sent him here in the first place?” Charles turned to look at Frost. “Or did you both get lucky?”

Frost let out a laugh. “I never sent Erik here to find treasure. I sent him here to kill you.”

And now it was Charles’s turn to laugh. “Kill me?” He was grinning, pointing at himself. “ _Kill_ me? You sent—Erik? Are you sure?”

“I know,” she quipped. “I didn’t expect him to fail quite as badly as he did. My mistake.”

“You’re serious?” Charles asked, turning to look at Erik. “That’s the reason you’re here?”

When Erik nodded, Charles’s smiling face collapsed.

“Oh,” he breathed. “You… you are serious.” He took a step closer to Erik and narrowed his eyes. “Was it not enough? How much she was offering you for killing me? Is that why you didn’t do it?!”

“Charles, please,” Erik begged, head hanging.

“He wouldn’t have gotten anything for killing you,” Frost informed with exasperation.

“So he was going to do it for fun?” Charles said to his face, breathing hard. Erik wanted to reach forward and touch him, close his arms around him, but he’d done it for the last time last night.

“Oh, _no_ , Charles. Erik and I had an agreement. I needed you dead for the inheritance to be—”

“I figured,” Charles interrupted, his voice strained, urging her to continue.

Frost cleared her throat. “And Erik was the perfect candidate for carrying out the task. He owed me,” she said shortly, evading the topic.

“What did he owe you?” Charles demanded.

“A favour,” Frost replied, folding her arms. “The details might be a bit too much for you in one day, I think—”

“Seeing as I’ve just been told that I’m completely _disposable_ to the person I considered my family, I think I can handle this!” Charles bellowed, causing Erik to take a step forward on impulse and raise his hands towards the boy’s shoulders. When Charles saw his hovering hands, he looked even more shattered.

Erik had so much to say, but nothing came onto his tongue. Nothing was going to take him back to last night when Charles was warm and content inside his arms.

Frost made nothing of Charles’s slight outburst, plucking her handbag from her elbow and settling it on her lap. “A man named Sebastian Shaw killed Erik’s parents. And, with my help, Erik put an end to him.” Frost then stood up again, this time whilst rummaging through her handbag. She took out an envelope and fanned herself with it. “Then, a few days after Brian died, I decided to arrange the bail for Erik to be released from jail, and sent him straight here to kill you, and make me rich.” She shrugged. “That was our agreement. And now we’re even.”

She was handing the envelope to him.

Erik was still looking at Charles.

“Here,” she said, shaking the envelope. “You have until the end of the week to move in.”

“Wait,” Erik told her, instead moving closer towards Charles. There wasn’t a whisper from the boy, who immediately turned around, his back to Erik, the moment he had spoken. “Charles…”

The boy resolutely ignored him. Erik rested his hand on Charles’s shoulder and that was when he whirled around with a pained expression.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

Erik jerked his head back. It felt worse than being punched in the throat. It was the worst combination of words he had ever heard, and he had to hear Charles say it _again_ , louder—

“I asked you why didn’t you just _kill_ me? What stopped you? You’ve done it before!” Charles reached forward and grabbed his collar, his big blue challenging eyes stricken with grief and fighting tears. “You could’ve done it any time you wanted, dammit, you had— _millions_ of opportunities. What the hell was so difficult?!”

Erik shook his head, hands reaching for Charles’s as they clung onto his neck and tugged, hurting him. He didn’t mind; he just wanted to have Charles’s hands inside his.

Frost had lost her patience by now, and was clearing her throat to get attention. When it wasn’t granted, she set the envelope down on the coffee table and left swiftly, shutting the door behind her.

Then they were alone, and Charles asked him again. Quietly, raggedly, he croaked,

“Why didn’t you bloody _kill_ me Erik?”

He swallowed, clenching Charles’s shivering hands.

“You know why,” he whispered.

The boy shook his head, doleful. “I don’t.”

“You do.”

“You think I know,” Charles retorted, “why some absolute stranger straight out of prison would want to keep me _alive_ \- when nobody in my own family has ever cared about me? You think that’s something I would _know_? What the hell do you want from me, tell me—”

“Nothing,” Erik said, shaking his head. “I don’t want anything from you. I’ll leave.”

He’ll leave.

He wouldn’t have to be putting Charles through this any longer.

Charles shut his eyes tight and let go of him. His hands slid down Erik’s chest before they dropped to his sides.

“You’re a liar and a murderer,” Charles whispered, his voice trembling the same way his body was, wrapped in silk and still slightly remnant of soapy bath water. “And you’re the only person in the world who cares about me.”

Erik exhaled.

“Now you’re going to leave me?”

He shook his head vaguely, passing his hands down his face and reaching for Charles again, but the boy backed away towards the door.

He twisted the handle and let himself out, Erik following him as he headed out towards the corridor and barged into—the kitchen, where the door had been closed intentionally. Uncaring, the boy stood at the entrance, watching the staff halt abruptly in their tracks.

“The birthday boy is here!” shouted the butler, over the commotion, alerting the entire room to Charles’s presence. The cook busy with the noisy electric mixer stopped and turned around, sidestepping to cover the window of the oven where two baking tins were sitting inside.

Charles looked around at each face and sagged.

“You all care about me, don’t you?” he said in a small voice.

Erik glimpsed at the kitchen staff working tirelessly, so early in the day, preparing all of Charles’s favourite meals.

“You all cook me food and clean after me and provide me with everything I could possibly need without me even asking for it.” He brought his bottom lip into his mouth, and so the next word didn’t even make its way out, suddenly trapped in his throat. Erik knew that feeling too well.

“Oh, my dear, dear boy,” the butler cooed, dropping his ladle to walk towards Charles. He opened his arms, and Charles went, embracing him with all of his might. “Everyone here cares about you. You’re very special to us.”

“Really?” Charles choked, lifting his head to look around. He gently pulled away from the man, and went towards the next person who nodded their head to affirm, arms wrapping tight around their waists. He went from one shoulder to the next, mumbling “thank you”, until there was nobody else left.

Then the butler look at Erik, and said to Charles, “What about Mr Lehnsherr?”

Charles continued to look at the floor, eyes wet.

“I think he deserves the biggest hug. You might not realise, Charles, but he cares about you so very much.”

The boy swallowed visibly hard.

“He comes down every morning looking for you, always has to make sure he knows where you are. When you were ill, he didn’t leave your bedside once, did you know that? I had to argue with him to leave, and in return he’d argue with me to take your food up to you. The night of that dinner—oh, it was the sweetest thing—you fell asleep in the car, and Mr Lehnsherr was kind enough to carry you all the way up to your bed. You probably didn’t even realise it, did you?”

Charles slowly shook his head.

He looked up at Erik before hesitantly making his way over, cutting the distance between them.

And then the boy was hugging him, arms around his neck, and sobbed into his chest. He held Erik tighter, all of a sudden, raised up on his tiptoes, and breathed in.

\---

While breakfast was being prepared, Charles was in the lounge, seated in front of the fireplace with his knees tucked under his chin and his ankles crossed.

Erik watched him for a long while, soundlessly, before joining the boy on the floor.

Glassy eyed, he continued to look into the fire.

“I’m sorry,” Erik murmured, intently watching his knuckles go pink as the heat enveloped him. “You don’t deserve… any of this.”

Charles blinked. He turned slightly towards him and let Erik press his nose to his temple. Erik stroked the boy’s hair back.

“If it was anyone else, I’d be dead, right?” he asked tonelessly.

Erik shivered. If it was anyone else that Frost sent, he would never have known Charles.

“You would’ve charmed them the way you charmed me,” Erik said decisively, moving close enough to bring his lips to Charles’s forehead, but to his shock, the boy was moving away.

Erik’s throat seized up. Charles was leaning to the side, his eyes looking confused and miserable as they skittered across Erik’s face.

The space between them may have been small, but it was growing with every moment that Charles kept away from him, chest heaving.

Eventually, Erik’s hand dropped. He nodded, trying to convey that he understood why Charles had balked, and he began to move away towards the opposite end of the fireplace.

“I didn’t mean to,” Charles whispered, before crawling back towards him and settling with his head on Erik’s chest.

“It’s okay if you want me to go—”

“No,” Charles urged, fisting his hand in Erik’s collar. “I’m just…”

“Whatever you are, it’s fine.”

Charles curled up against him with a sigh.

“You could’ve killed me,” he stated in realisation.

Erik shut his eyes and thinned his lips.

“But you took care of me instead.”

Charles lay his other hand on Erik’s, distractedly tracing the length of his fingers.

“Christ, Erik, you—fussed over my safety and happiness more than anyone. What did I do to you to make you care about me? That I couldn’t do to my own bloody parents?”

Erik opened his eyes in time to see a tear race down Charles’s cheek. When the boy saw him looking, he schooled his expression, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m eighteen years old, for God’s sake. I need to,” he stood up from the ground, adjusting the robe around him, “get over myself.”

He traipsed towards the door, muttering about how he’ll be down in time for breakfast, leaving Erik to stare at the coffee table.

With the envelope on it.

He stared at it for a while, and when he got up and walked towards it, his hand remained poised over it for another, longer while, but after a beat of thought, he decided to go upstairs and follow Charles.

\---

Steam was floating past the slightly ajar bathroom door when Erik entered the boy’s bedroom.

Mesmerising as it was, his gaze latched onto the bed instead, where the sheets were still dirty and askew from last night, spilling towards the carpet.

Erik looked away, back towards the door, and rapped his knuckles a few times just so Charles could be informed of his presence.

When there was no response, he knocked again.

“Charles?” he called out.

He slowly made his way inside, squinting against the steam. “Charles!” he repeated.

Suddenly, the shower stopped. Erik stood before the bathtub as the steam cleared and divulged the boy, standing wet and flushed and perfectly capable of hearing him. And seeing him.

“Erik?!” he gasped, reaching for his towel and bringing it in front of him, then letting out a sigh, his hair falling onto his face. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I was—just…” He averted his gaze and stared at the towel rack as Charles wiped himself dry. “I was calling for you, but you didn’t reply.”

“I couldn’t hear you at all. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Erik said dumbly. “I don’t know, I began to fear the worst, so I stormed in. Sorry about that.”

Charles sighed, then placed his hand on Erik’s shoulder for support as he climbed out of the tub.

“I don’t know why you care so much but I appreciate it,” Charles said airily, as he padded into the bedroom. He stopped at the sight of the bed, too.

“We should probably get these in the machine before someone else does,” Erik suggested, and Charles adjusted the towel around his hips before he nodded.

“Would be quite embarrassing,” he said, stripping the sheets from one side of the bed, while Erik took the other.

“Good thing everyone’s busy downstairs for the morning.”

Charles pursed his lips gingerly and helped him fold the covers.

When they were done, dirty sheets in a pile along with the pillow cases, Charles quietly said,

“It’s understandable if you want to leave.”

Charles walked towards him slowly, and Erik tried not to react to his partial nudity or his words.

“I’m sorry if what I said earlier made you feel like I’m forcing you to stay. At the end of the day, it’s your decision.”

“What do _you_ want?” Erik asked, and he couldn’t resist looking down at Charles’s pale torso for just a brief moment. “I’m a liar, and a murderer, that’s all true. I even took away your father’s hidden money, regardless of why I did it; that’s the sort of thing I’m capable of doing. Do you still want me?”

Charles’s lips trembled, and Erik eyed them—their soft red fullness reminded him of a rose, and now he was thinking about the way they would press up into his in a desperate attempt to make Erik never want to think about having anyone else.

Charles, on the other hand, could have anyone else and _should_ , if he wanted something less complicated and messy.

“You could have anyone you wanted,” he emphasised to the boy. “Anyone at all.”

Charles darted his gaze to the side and inhaled a shuddering lungful.

“I bet Logan would let you wrap him around your finger. He’s quite taken with you.”

“I don’t think he’s… into men,” Charles said thoughtfully.

Erik shrugged. “He’s into you, though.”

“I know,” Charles said curtly, glancing at his hands.

“And he’d never let anything happen to you, would he? Not after that night. He’d keep you close as possible and make you as happy as he could.”

“I know,” he said again. “He would.”

Erik cocked his head. “So?”

“So? I must be a fool, then,” Charles said tightly, turning around and walking towards his closet. “If you think I’ll ask you to leave simply because I could _do better_ —”

“I have no right to be staying in this house. None at all. I can’t be living under this roof with you like I’ve earned my way to this luxury.”

Charles whipped round. “You don’t think you’ve done something _good_? You don’t think you’ve been a _good person_ here? Protecting me and loving me the way I’ve always wanted? Then fine! Do as you wish. Go if you want!”

“Not like this when you’re _angry_ at me, we need to sit down and talk about—”

“There’s nothing more to say,” Charles claimed, angrily reaching for a shirt and letting it fall to the floor, then bending down and picking it up again. “You can go and do whatever it is that you want. See if you can make anyone else— _ugh,_ just…” Charles flailed his arms in defeat. “Whatever the hell it is you’re going to do with a criminal record to your name.”

“I’m supposed to be in jail,” Erik said pragmatically, in lieu of that. Of what Charles wanted to keep in his home.

“You’re supposed to be _here_. With me.” Charles sighed, looked at the shirt he was holding, and tossed it away. He sounded numb, “You’re a good person here.”

Erik took a step closer to the boy until Charles had to tilt his head back.

“My parents sacrificed themselves just so I could live. I killed the person who took them away from me and I feel _no_ regret for doing that. They wanted me to make something of myself: get a job, get a house, be independent. And what have I done? What have I done to make them proud, make their sacrifice worthwhile?”

Charles stared at him wide-eyed.

“You don’t think your parents would be proud of you for saving someone’s life?” Charles asked with care, and it made Erik’s chest close in painfully.

“I didn’t save your life I just didn’t kill you,” he retorted.

Charles tilted his head to the side. “I wouldn’t be _alive_ if not for you.”

Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. “Stop it, Charles. Stop making me out to be some sort of do-gooder.”

“Forgive me, then,” Charles spat bitterly, looking down at the shirt he had discarded and picking it up to put it on. He buttoned it on hastily.

Erik sighed. “I just don’t want you to have expectations of me that I can’t—please, Charles. Every time I look at you I think about what I’ve done, and how I _far_ from deserve you.”

Charles moved on to his drawers, where he took out a pair of briefs and slipped them on under his towel, which puddled at his ankles.

“Like I said,” he droned. “It’s your decision.”

Erik’s eyes fell to Charles’s arse as he bent over to retrieve his towel. He looked away at the display of Charles’s clothes and picked out a royal blue sweater vest with silver buttons, just so he was doing something other than staring.

“This one,” he said, tugging the item off its hanger and handing it to Charles.

The boy looked at him oddly. “You like that one?”

“I hate them all,” he replied.

“Tough luck.” Charles popped each button open then threaded his arms through it, rather ceremoniously, considering he could’ve just tugged it over his head. “You won’t have to see them if you leave.”

Erik marched forward and cupped Charles’s face in his hands, tipping it up to make their eyes meet. Charles’s fingers went still against his button, and slowly, moved to the back of Erik’s neck. With one sharp pull towards him, Erik was onto his mouth, tipping his head back so that Erik could suck on the swell of his bottom lip. The sounds of saliva against tongue and light, quick breaths and that tiny little moan that Charles had helplessly let out were all too much for him right now, when he was thinking about leaving all of this. Still, he peppered Charles’s rosy mouth with insistent kisses, and when he was convinced that the boy wasn’t going anywhere, he let his hands fall to cup his arse instead. Charles arched, letting Erik lift the hem of his sweater vest and shirt so that his fingers could slide past the waistband of his briefs and grab handfuls of his arse—his fingers dug into the flesh, thumbs somewhere at the top of his crease, barely resisting the urge to part his cheeks and dive inwards. With each motion of his hands, kneading and palming with ardour, Charles was brought up onto his tiptoes, high enough that Erik’s cock started to brush the boy’s hip.

Charles’s lips paused, one plastered to Erik’s chin and the other inside Erik’s mouth, sitting over his tongue. His eyes fluttered open a moment after Erik’s did, and they shared an agonisingly long, heated look.

The boy’s hands moved behind him, and began prying his briefs past his hips. Erik looked down between them at the sight of Charles’s cock darting out, half-erect over his balls, then watched as Charles parted his legs and lifted his knees until his briefs landed on the floor. He stepped out of them slowly, before looking up at Erik and wrapping one leg around his waist. Erik quickly supported him with one arm around his back while the other hand hoisted Charles’s other thigh high up on his waist. They almost tipped backwards, then, but Erik quickly reoriented himself once he’d propped Charles against the wall, the boy’s hand reaching to the side and grabbing the first thing he could reach.

Which was, the thin pole holding Charles’s coats and jackets, and it might have been secure enough to let him hold on, but then—

The whole thing came crashing down.

Before Erik knew it, he had landed on the pile of coats, Charles next to him, and they were both looking up at the ceiling of the small walk-in closet.

“I forgot that one was wobbly.”

Erik turned to look at him.

“It’s the fifth time this has happened.”

Erik frowned and turned his face to the ceiling again. Charles moved up onto his knees and rolled on top of him, his face burying into Erik’s neck.

“I love you,” he whispered, nuzzling Erik’s throat.

He shut his eyes and sighed.

He felt undone.

Charles rutted against him and whimpered, his hands desperate as they searched for Erik’s hands and pulled one around his waist and the other down between them, where his cock was pulsing for attention.

Then came the timely call for breakfast from downstairs.

When neither of them moved,

“It’s getting cold! Hurry up!”

“We’re coming!” Charles yelled back, followed by a quiet, “not really,” as he pushed himself up into a seating position. He cleared his throat and looked down at his cock, then to the slight tent in Erik’s trousers. He then started to look around him at the mess of clothes.

Oh, right. His briefs were somewhere under here.

Charles climbed off of him and crawled around to where they had been standing, searching through the mess—Erik finally deciding to help him—and together they unearthed his underwear. Charles shimmied it on and quickly picked out a pair of trousers next, which he tugged over his legs and tucked his shirt into. The boy’s hair was an untamed bird’s nest of curls and waves, and he struggled to get his belt on, given how much time his cock was taking to soften, but they made it downstairs just in time to hear the butler chide them, both of them still winded from having to run to and from the laundry room, where the soiled sheets had been safely deposited.

It was such juvenile behaviour, and Erik even felt himself blush as Charles offhandedly mentioned the fallen coat rack in his closet that needed fixing. He sliced through his pancakes and kept his gaze down on the table as he wondered how he was ever going to leave this place.

So he didn’t. Not immediately, at least.

He stayed for the entire day.

He stayed when a trio of suit-clad briefcase-wielding men came trundling through the front door, asking to speak to Charles alone, regarding the signing of some confidential documents, and Erik paced outside the lounge until the door opened an hour later. Charles looked haggard, but when he saw Erik, he brightened—then carefully straightened his expression into something neutral. Right, because this was the game they were playing. Charles won every time Erik did something _good_.

He stayed when the staff shepherded him into the kitchen, where a three-tiered chocolate cake was sat in the middle of the dining table with two large candles wedged on its top, all oozing wax onto the frosting. There was an assortment of cupcakes and finger food also arranged prettily around the cake, and when Charles burst in and heard everyone shout, “Surprise!” he started to cry.

And Erik stayed to watch him wipe those tears and smile, cut into the cake, and lock everyone into tight hugs like the little bear he was, then turn around to face him, because he was the only one left and they both knew his contribution had been non-existent, but Charles still curled an arm around him as though they’d never made love in this universe. Erik pecked his forehead and when the boy clutched his arm and squeezed it, he kissed a little bit harder.

He stayed for the feast and he stayed for a brief chess game with Charles, which had been so quiet and laborious that Erik had actually sank into his seat, because all he really wanted to do was have the boy in his lap wearing his furry socks while Erik kissed his neck and demanded forgiveness for ever thinking about putting a gun there.

What he _should_ have been doing was leaving.

Starting his goodbyes.

He did a search on his phone for bodyguard services. He showed Charles the results that came up, and watched as the boy’s face fell, lips dragging downwards. Charles shoved off his seat and left his study, slamming the door behind him.

\---

Instead of planning his leave, Erik found himself going into Charles’s room that night. He’d gone in assuming the boy was fast asleep, given it was past midnight, but Charles was lying awake with the bedside lamp on and a book opened on his chest.

Erik paused at the door, then silently shut it behind him.

Charles eyed him, looking pointedly at the nightclothes Erik was in. He hadn’t packed them, exactly, seeing as he planned to leave them here, but he could see why Charles would find him absurd right now.

“I thought you’d be gone,” Charles said tritely.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Erik replied.

Charles turned his head away. “You know I don’t sleep well without you.”

Erik walked closer to the bed and sat down on the empty side. He patted the pillow, the fresh clean sheets, and laid his head on top of it. He swung his legs onto the bed, and facing away from Charles, he shut his eyes and said, “Go to sleep.”

Charles immediately shuffled with his book and then clicked the lamp off. He sunk into the bed and moved closer to him, pulling on the blanket, and placed his arm around Erik’s waist.

Just two minutes later, Erik had his hand cupped over Charles’s mouth, both of their pyjama bottoms wrenched to their ankles, as Erik ground his hips into Charles’s.

“Fuck, Erik, fuck,” Charles panted, and sometimes he moaned so loud it circulated the room, and other times he was so quiet that Erik had to take his hand away in fear of the boy passing out. They’d barely used any lube at all, coated in their own slick and sweat, even though Charles had reminded Erik of which drawer he could find both lube and condoms in.

The truth was, Erik held reservations about being Charles’s first, in the penetrative sense. Sure he didn’t want anyone _else_ to do it, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but still fear himself whenever he was around Charles. What if he lost control and hurt Charles?

All the same, Charles looked like a dream when he came, lips parted and eyes shut, a slight frown between his brows as he tipped his head back and went lax.

Charles didn’t cling to him that night.

He placed Erik’s hand over his waist, and turned onto his side, both hands on the pillow.

He didn’t cling to Erik’s shoulders or twine their limbs together. He simply said,

“Promise me you’ll still be here tomorrow.”

He didn’t answer until the morning.

“I will leave eventually,” Erik mumbled into Charles’s ear, sunlight slipping into the cracks under the boy’s eyelids and waking him up to the sound of Erik’s voice.

“Why do you keep banging on about it?” Charles hissed, taking the apologetic hand on his shoulder and pulling on it until it was between his legs. He wrapped Erik’s fingers around his hard-on.

Erik scooted closer to Charles. “Just so you know that I do plan on it.”

“Oh,” Charles huffed, “the way you planned on killing me?”

He sighed, giving Charles a soft tug. “There’s a huge difference between leaving you and killing you.”

“No,” Charles said quietly. “There isn’t.”

\---

It was when most of the staff had pittered back into the kitchen as breakfast was being served that Charles set his fork down and spoke.

“If there’s anyone here, and I mean _anyone_ at _all_ , who wants to leave: they are welcome to. Nobody is under any obligation to stay in this house.”

To some, it was the new, official owner of the house ensuring his employees were satisfied where they were, and should any of them want to leave, they had his permission to go.

To Erik, it was a very unconvincing order.

There was a short length of silence, interrupted casually by a cough, and then the butler’s soles tapping against the tiles as he swept towards Charles.

“Who would want to leave you, hm?” he said, his hand cupping Charles’s cheek and squeezing in a gesture that was both fond and paternal, and had the boy’s face crinkle into sad lines. “Oh, no…”

But Charles had already started weeping, his body turning in his chair so that he could clutch the man’s apron as he buried his face in the sauce-stained cloth and silently let out a stream of tears - the only sound was his sharp intake of breath.

It was as if Charles hadn’t grown in age at all, the way he was crying into his butler’s embrace, but the more Erik considered it, the more he realised that this _was_ Charles growing up. This, all this sadness and tears was part of him shedding his youth.

Erik remembered it too well.

\---

When they were wrapped up in each other, it was easy to forget. Thankfully, the things he wanted to forget were blanketed away by the tenderness of touch and the intensity of lust, but the things he constantly needed to remember were also being discreetly swept away from the forefront of his mind.

Like the nearness of the week’s end.

Like those ugly scars on his back.

Carried away as he was, Erik didn’t realise that by letting Charles take his shirt off, he was exposing his back, and the marred skin that he wore there could be felt, or worse, seen.

Charles wasn’t just inquisitive verbally – his hands also had the tendency to want to know more. The planes of Erik’s body, his arms and chest and torso, were all feeding into Charles’s satisfaction. His fingers pressed down hard onto Erik’s abdomen as he ground his hips onto Erik’s, their clothes the barrier as Charles’s cleft slid around the girth of Erik’s cock. Sometimes his cock was embedded between the thickness of Charles’s arse cheeks, and sometimes it would miss, getting caught under his thigh. It was such an aggravating sensation, like his orgasm was constantly building and yet a century away, but the muted sort of pleasure that Charles was capable of giving him was difficult to deny.

“This would be… better… without… clothes,” Charles panted, throwing his head back to look at the ceiling as he continued with the inconsistent rhythm in his restless hips. “We should…” He dipped his thumbs into his briefs and peeled the material from his sweaty hipbones—

“Shit, no, _stop_.” He pulled Charles’s underwear back up. Foolish of him, to underestimate Charles. Of course he was being agonizingly off-target so that Erik might get worked up, tear their clothes off and give in.

Charles groaned, annoyed, his eyes now opened to slits as his brows drew together in a frown. “You _fuck_.”

Erik ignored the accusation, or the command, whatever it was, and pulled Charles towards him so that he was flattened on top of Erik’s body, cheek to cheek.

“My love,” he sighed.

“No.”

“My lovely horny teenager.”

“ _No_.”

“Alright.” With a grunt, he folded himself into a seating position, Charles also, and then pulled the boy’s legs around his waist. Like this, Charles could rub his arse along Erik’s shaft for as long as he fancied, and some time tomorrow, they might even come.

“It’s not e- _nough_ ,” Charles complained, his nipples hard and erect, the skin around them flushed and taut. “I’ve put all three fingers inside myself, I can handle—”

“These three fingers?” Erik asked, grabbing Charles’s tiny hand and bundling together his forefinger, middle finger and ring finger, showing him just how little space they occupied inside Erik’s fist. They both knew the circumference of his cock was far bigger.

“Don’t tease me,” Charles pouted, wrenching his hand out from Erik’s grip and leaning onto him, his arms around Erik’s shoulders.

Erik immediately stiffened.

He tried to stay still, pretend like it was nothing, even urging his face towards Charles’s for a kiss, but it was too late. The boy’s fingers were trailing across uneven, hideous scar tissue.

“What happened here?” Charles asked silently, spreading the fingers of his hand and retracting them in realisation of how far his scars spread. He tipped his head over Erik’s shoulder and looked down, because he just _had_ to know, didn’t he?

“Just some memoirs from jail,” Erik said bluntly, waiting for the moment where Charles would recoil from him. When he did, Erik sighed, pushing his hair back. Charles’s hard-on was gone, and so was the mood. Everything they’d been tentatively holding onto with brittle fingers had now slipped past their hold. It was inevitable.

Charles shifted to the other side of the bed and crossed his legs. Erik reached for his knee, just to see if he would flinch, but Charles quickly moved his legs up under his chin.

Erik let his hand fall onto the bed.

“I know how you feel about what I’ve done,” Erik said with a sad smile. “It’s not fair on you to have to deal with the fact that I’ve done something you’ll never agree with.”

Charles deserved so, so much better than the stony silence between them.

“How long were you… imprisoned for?” Charles whispered, the subject like a curse on his tongue.

“Six years,” Erik said.

“And you never once regretted it?”

Erik’s gaze hardened.

“No. Not once. I was satisfied to get my revenge and see that man die. He deserved a worse death.”

Charles looked horrified. He pulled his legs closer to himself.

“What do you know about who deserves to die, Erik?”

“You wouldn’t understand, Charles,” he remarked patiently. “But I knew exactly what that man did and what his motivations were. He _deserved_ to die. The same way that bloody—Marko, Kurt Marko does.”

Charles’s eyes widened. He started to retreat from the bed, hair a mess as he swept his hands through it and began searching for his clothes.

“Is it really that difficult for you to admit, Charles? You’re aware of what kind of person he is. His intentions to split your family apart and then take your father away, and to make it worse, he raided your house to steal your father’s work. If it wasn’t for the police investigation, he’d be over here, putting _your_ life under threat. Him and his son and Gott knows who else.” Erik stood up and followed Charles around the bed, trying to keep his voice calm. “It doesn’t make you a bad person if you think he deserves the worst.”

Charles went still at his words. He covered his face with his hands for a brief moment, then sank onto the bed again, shaking his head.

“Stop it, Erik, I don’t—I don’t want to hear this.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik said, dropping to his knees in front of Charles. “I’m sorry to be bringing this up, Charles, but Kurt Marko is a cruel man and I’ll never have mercy for him—not after what he’s done to you. You might, but I don’t.”

Charles’s frown deepened into a scowl. He looked at Erik with a grimace to his lips, like he despised what he was saying even despite the conviction in it, “I don’t have mercy for him.”

Erik released a breath. He cupped Charles’s face and kissed his forehead, comforting, begging, and the boy’s hands came round to hold his wrists, accepting.

He _knew_ that Charles would still, given the option, hand Marko over to authorities rather than allow him the worst kind of death. Because that was Charles. Charles was forgiving and accepting and he wanted everyone to have a second chance. He wanted Erik to have a second chance here with him. What Charles was too naïve and young to understand was that people like Marko, like Shaw, wouldn’t be so easily condemned by authorities. What Charles would never understand is that he wouldn’t be safe until Kurt Marko was _dead_.

And what Charles perhaps couldn’t appreciate was that Erik would do anything to make sure Charles was safe.

\---

It was like something had clicked back into place.

He rooted around the drawer for the gun he’d came with, and familiarised himself with it once again, but this time without reluctance and uncertainty. This time he was sure.

He’d almost forgotten he had a knife. He needed to become better adept at handling one, but otherwise, it was handy. People spoke more with a knife at their throat than a gun.

And considering he didn’t know much more than what was published by the press, he was going to be relying on a _lot_ of people to talk.

That night, Charles didn’t let him go to his own room, again. They slept side by side, and though there was no contact between them, it felt as though they were holding onto each other.

By now, Erik could tell when Charles was deeply submerged in sleep and how he looked when he was still on the periphery, mostly awake and thinking with his eyes shut and his body tucked away. Erik knew he wouldn’t react if he brushed his hand across the skin of his arm, or kissed his temple—if he got up and left, however…

Perhaps not. Charles needed to sleep, and Erik wasn’t going to disturb it. But the owl clock kept ticking on, tormenting him, and Charles was still feigning sleep, his breath becoming laboured as he felt Erik kiss his nape.

“Charles,” Erik whispered, but the boy didn’t say a word. Instead he held his breath, stiff. Erik tipped his head up to run his nose through the boy’s wavy hair, and then shifted himself even closer. “Keep sleeping,” he said softly, grazing his thumb over Charles’s temple. “You are unbearably beautiful. It’s not even fair.”

The boy barely made a motion. He was good at this, or maybe Erik was completely mistaken and talking to a Charles who really had nodded off.

Erik sighed, moving his arm so that his hand could support his head as he gazed down at Charles.

“I don’t know how I’ve ended up like this,” he mused aloud. “This was the last thing I expected. You were expecting love, Charles. I wasn’t. But I’m still the lucky one. And I’m sorry. I should’ve stopped us from getting this close but I didn’t, and somehow I know that if I had a chance to repeat everything again, I wouldn’t change that.” Erik bent down to kiss Charles’s cheek, twice. He let his breath ghost over the side of the boy’s face for a moment. “Maybe because I’m just a selfish man. I’m selfish. And when I say I love you and care about you it sounds like a lie, but it’s not. I want you to be safe more than anything else.”

He gathered Charles’s body towards his, arms around the boy’s waist, and he nuzzled his collarbone, ignoring the hitch in Charles’s breath as though it had never happened.

“I know you’re torn, Charles. Torn between being letting yourself be repulsed by me and wanting to accept me. So I’m going to make it very easy for you.”

He kissed Charles’s ear and laid his head to rest, finding the boy’s hands and squeezing them together like they were shackled to each other. He hated himself, quite frankly, and hoped Charles could hate him too. Would Charles start to hate him when he left?

If Charles found out Kurt Marko was murdered soon after, would he despise Erik the way Erik despised himself?

“Everything will be okay, Charles. I promise.”

Neither of them got much sleep at all that night, and as Erik walked Charles to college the next day with the boy’s book bag slung over his shoulder, it was evident. He tried not to think too hard about the way Charles’s steps never got big enough to overtake him and never slacked in pace in order to get left behind him. They walked almost exactly level, the boy’s arm a constant press against his side.

And then Logan was there, leaning against a pillar with a cigarette stuck between his teeth. His bored expression transformed into delight when he saw Charles trudging towards him with lazy eyes and a pleasant smile, and they embraced for a moment while Erik studied the grass.

“Happy Birthday, bub,” Logan said, to which Charles raised a brow.

“How did you know?” he asked, incredulous. “I’ve never mentioned it.”

Logan shrugged, patting Charles’s back as they stepped apart.

“You Googled me,” Charles deduced, folding his arms and pouting. “How impressive.”

They devolved into an amicable quarrel about Logan’s honest efforts to know Charles’s birth date, and what he was planning on getting Charles, which further erupted into an even worse argument about how unnecessary Charles thought it was for Logan to get him anything at all, the thought being all that counted.

Erik knew what Charles was doing—he was _trying_. And he was letting himself realise how much someone else cared for him, too, and he wasn’t outright declaring himself undeserving. Erik felt proud of him, in a way that made his chest ache.

“Where’s your lecture?” Logan was asking him as they began to walk towards the campus.

“Oh, it’s _all_ the way in the Great Hall, on the other side. I’ll probably see you afterwards…?”

Logan made a flippant gesture. “I could walk ya now.”

“That’s _fine_ , it’ll take you an age to get back—”

“Nah, I have—er, I gotta go to the thingy building anyway, I’ll walk ya. C’mon.”

Charles stared at Logan oddly, but then took his lead. He turned around to look at Erik, who quickly handed him his book bag.

Then he lifted a hand and waved.

Charles frowned, waving back.

It wasn’t supposed to be odd—not really, considering his behaviour around Charles—but when Erik caught up to them from a distance, Logan was seeing Charles off at the entrance of the hall. Charles went inside, and Logan slowly turned around, walking slowly, before turning right back and dropping his bag on the floor outside the hall. He sat down, wrists over his knees, and began to wait.

So this was a man infatuated with Charles.

Erik had never thought he’d actually find something in common with Logan, but here he was, sitting outside Charles’s class, besotted.

It was easier, then, to make his way back to the mansion, hurriedly, bolt past a maid at the door and clamber up the stairs so he could head up to his room—no longer his room, now—and take the bag he’d prepared to leave with for some time, the envelope inside it. He slid his gun into his back pocket, behind his jacket, and stowed his bag across his torso before heading out.

And then he began to run.

It had been a long, long time since he’d run for someone’s life. He might actually have missed it. The hunt, the adrenaline, the thrilling surge of unexpected danger and hard-earned success.

The only difference was that this wasn’t revenge.

This was love.

Love was that thing that made it all the more satisfying to watch Kurt Marko drown after he fell over the cliff edge he was cornered into. After eight long months, love didn’t _let_ him drop his gun and surrender.

Love made him run. It made him run all the way back.


End file.
